A Feddie Story
by NGTM-R
Summary: It's Universal Century 0079, early April, and Zeon has just landed on Earth for the first time. Federation mobile suits? Just a dream. It's up to the tankies to hold the line now. Load sabot! Target Zaku, direct front!
1. Fife And Gun

Threw in a little Zeonquest reference because why not. Still, let's not kid ourselves: there are way too many people fanboying the folks who killed half of humanity out there.

**Fife And Gun**

"Zekes really coming?"

"They're really coming, Cat. IR fritzing out didn't clue you in?"

"That son of a bitch Minovsky ain't got nothing to be proud of. Be thankful your low-light scopes still work." The Type 61 Main Battle Tank's hatches were closed, as they had been for the last two hours. They were dug in, deep, on a low hill, only the turret showing. It was an older model, 61A3, with a three-person crew and 150mm cannon, unlike the newer 61A5 with their two-man crew and 155mm guns. Zeon forces had landed in Mexico four days ago and were pushing up towards their position in Texas.

"We were going to get shielded IR next month too. Why the fuck would you invade Earth anyways?" Cat Williams, 23, lance corporal, driver. Five years in the EFGF. Got busted from sergeant over striking a superior officer after failing to get a transfer spaceside when the balloon went up.

"Zekes ran out of people to kill in space. The Sides got hit real bad in the early going, Corp." Ritchie Smith, 20, PFC, gunner. Was visiting family on Earth when his colony got gassed during Operation British, enlisted in the EFGF the same day. Left a degree in high-energy physics in the rubble.

"You can bet the Zeke gear works just fine, so pay attention. There'll be time enough for jawing when the shooting's done." Jeannette Montange, 24, sergeant, commander. Cajun, not proper French. Six years in the EF military, two as one of the rare tank drivers in the colonies, four as a tank commander on Earth.

* * *

"Movement, three o'clock, one kilometer, in the treeline." The driver's optics are just as good as the gunner's in this case. Better, arguably, since the driver has eyes on the back of the tank for reversing that the gunner doesn't. God knows why they removed that from the A5.

"One of those Wappa things. Coax up."

"Hold your fire. He's way out of range." Jeannette zoomed in closer. "He doesn't even have night-vision gear. That's not going to be very helpful-" A shell, a starshell, burst over the position of her platoon.

"Driver, back to Alternate One! Popping smoke!" The night resounded to cannon fire, but it was a solid miss, three meters over the top of their turret. Some Zeke gunner too used to trying to range on a colony with all the wonky physics of a rotating structure. "Gunner, target tank, at the treeline, four o'clock." Jeannette prayed the Willie Pete smoke cans were everything they were advertised to be, or they'd be sitting ducks to thermal viewers.

"Loading sabot. Up! On the way!" One barrel only of the tank's two. Dual linked was a waste on most targets.

"Lost him in the smoke!" Enemy, and friendly, artillery pounded the position they'd just vacated. Jeanette checked where the rest of her platoon was; lieutenant's tank was on the left, guns elevated, Strunk's beyond that. White should be somewhere to her right, but he wasn't visible. _Damn, already? Probably just can't see him. _She scanned the horizon to her front, and her heart skipped a beat.

"Target Zaku, direct front!" At least they were too tall to hide in the trees. And too tall for the low-hanging smoke clouds, intended to conceal tanks and IFVs from other tanks and IFVs, to work._ Damn, damn, damn!_

"On the way!" The Zaku sidestepped the shot; at over a kilometer and a half, the time of flight was just too long. "Reloading!"

"Miss! Driver, displace. Left fifty meters." _We got scouted. I told the damn captain we should have stayed with the 215!_

"Holy hell!" The position they had been in was annihilated by the Zaku's full-auto 120mm gun. At least ten rounds, maybe more.

"Less watching the pyrotechnics, more driving!"

"Tw-fo-r," the radio was scratchy, Minovsky interference, but at least some meaning could be divined. Sometimes. "Move t-ph-line delta."

"Back to the next phase line, quick as you can. Gunner! Target tank, coming out of the smoke, eleven o'clock!"

"On the way!" Still only one barrel. If you missed, you could always correct your aim and fire the second.

Christ, she could see two Zakus now, and some of those armored car things the Zekes liked. "Hit! Took his track off-crew's bailing. Target weasel, eleven o'clock!" The Zeon amphibious recon vehicle was actually called a "Weasel", but because of its battlefield role of surveying the area and running away to tell others it probably would have earned that name anyways; along with less complementary ones.

"You sure, Sarge?" Ritchie asked.

"Yes! Goddammit, don't question me in a fight Rich!"

"On the way! Reloading!"

"Hit! Tore his turret off, he's running." God, those Zakus were fast. The first one was getting awful close. She lased it; _six hundred meters!_ "Target Zaku, twelve o'clock!" Jeannette switched to the platoon channel. "That Zaku is getting real close, Lieutenant!"

"Two fo-targ-the-aku!" the lieutenant's voice replied. The Zaku was shooting, off to the left.

"Up! On the way!" Both barrels this time.

"Hit! Hit!" The Zaku stumbled as three shells crashed into its legs, two from them, one from the right. It retaliated with a burst to either side of Jeannette's vehicle, but didn't seem to see them. It also didn't seem any of the shells had penetrated, just bounced off the leg armor. "No effect! Aim higher, Rich! Cat, pull us back so he can get it in the torso, fast as possible!"

"Up! On the way! Reloading!"

"Hit! Hit!" Two rounds into the center lower torso. There was a flash, and the Zaku went down only three hundred and fifty meters away. "Confirmed kill!"

"Take that Zabi!" Ritchie yelled. "Send you all back to Side Three in pieces!"

"Pipe down! Target, weasel, one o'clock!" Jeanette snapped.

"Up! On the way!" Ritchie sounded at least a little bit contrite in this.

"Hit! Kill!" The round had gone straight through the light armor on the recon vehicle, in the front and out the back. It started to brew up. "Target weasel, direct front!"

"On the way! Reloading!"

She couldn't see the second Zaku anymore. The Zeon amphibious armored car popped smoke before the tracer reached it. "Lost him in the smoke." She couldn't see anything that looked particularly like a Zeon unit at all, in fact. Where had they all gone? "Cat, get us to our position on delta."

* * *

It had started to rain, if one was generous; really it was more like a light mist. The sky was also lightening slowly, though it was not yet dawn. They had waited at phase line delta for ten minutes and seen no friendly units. At fifteen minutes two guys on foot, Gutierrez and Chan from Two-One, had showed up. Now they were riding on the bustle while the tank headed to the rally point specified for if everything had gone wrong.

Jeannette stood in her open hatch, hands idly gripping the commander's MG mainly just to have something to hold on to. "It was painted like a skeleton?"

"Yeah. Went through Three Company like they were nothing sarge. That Zeke pilot was loco, ran straight into cannon fire like he didn't care. His buddy started in on Two Three and our platoon, threw his heat hawk at our tank. Cut the engine in half." Gutierrez explained.

"First Sergeant Jenkins told us to bail out and run." Chan added. "We made it about twenty meters before the ammo storage blew. I didn't see the Top bail out."

"Me neither." Gutierrez agreed. "We headed for delta, looking for friendlies. Damn glad we caught you before you pulled back sarge."

Jeanette nodded, her eyes scanning the sky. The lighter it got, the more she had to worry about aircraft; both Zeon's Dopps and her own side's Fly Mantas and Toriaries. The pilots could not always be trusted to tell the sheep from the goats. "You see what happened to the captain's tank?"

Chan grimaced. "He took a hit from a Magella Attack in the opening volley. His tank didn't brew up or anything, but I didn't see it move again."

They should have passed through a friendly artillery battery on this little cross-country trip, but they hadn't yet. No sign of any friendlies. "Sarge, four o'clock." Ritchie said.

Every good tank commander has a pair of binoculars, at least until the turret monster eats them and they have to get new ones. "Looking. That's...a Fanfan." The ground-effect rotor vehicle was rare on Earth, usually deployed in colonies. It was sometimes a recon vehicle in the EFGF, but usually those were Bloodhounds. Captured vehicle was a real possibility. "Load HEAT but don't put the guns on target." Again she switched to radio. "Any Earth Federation unit, this is Sergeant Montange, Two-Eleven Armored Battalion. Please respond."

Back to intercom. "Behind that bump on the left and halt, Cat." That'd put them down far enough that they'd be invisible.

"Montange, can yo-uthenticate?" The Minovsky interference was lesser after a ten-mile trip.

"Negative, no way. The codes died with my lieutenant." Jeannette grimaced to herself. The EFF was still adapting to the era of Minovsky warfare, where it was easy to get separated and lost.

"Advanc-slowly."

"Cat, takes us around the hill and advance at ten klicks an hour." She lowered the commander's seat until she was just peaking over the edge of it. "Chan, Gutierrez, you might want to dismount. If these are Zekes, tell my dad he was a shit."

Chan hopped off the tank, but Gutierrez looked at her like she was crazy. "You serious, sarge?"

"Why do you think I ended up in the army? Now get off my tank, soldier." Jeanette replied testily.

The 61A3 crept forward. Glancing down at her turret optics and sweeping them back and forth she could see more vehicles, now; a couple of 74-model hover vehicles, not the truck type, but the IFV model, the Wolfhound.

"Montage, halt." That transmission was clear. She ducked down but didn't close her hatch. One of the Wolfhounds darted up and its commander popped out of the turret, so she raised her head again. "Is New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi?"

_Trying to ask a question only an Earther from North America would know? You're lucky, Strunk would have failed this._ "No. It's upriver, on Lake Pontchartrain."

The Wolfhound commander grimaced. "Welcome back to the army, Sergeant. We're with the Two Fifteen Mechanized Infantry. Anyone else from your unit make it out?"

Jeannette swore softly. "Couple of guys behind that hill there, but they bailed out their tank. Beyond that, I haven't seen anyone else from the Two-Eleven since we got hit by the Zekes three hours ago. For all I know the Zekes are five minutes behind me."

"All right," the Wolfhound commander spoke into his mic for a moment, directing another vehicle to pick up Chan and Gutierrez. "There's a dirt road two hundred meters that way," he pointed. "Once you hit it, turn left and follow the road until you reach pavement, then head north. The Colonel wants to talk to you and the other survivors."

Jeanette nodded. _Survivors_. They hadn't met anyone else, then. She looked at her hands. They didn't shake, and she wasn't sure why. _The entire battalion in one fight. Fuck. Fuck!_


	2. Whistling Dixie

If you want an idea of what a Wolfhound looks like, picture the Type 74 hovertruck fully armored and with a Bradley turret. I chose 60mm for their guns since that's also standard mobile suit vulcan size, so it makes sense the caliber is already in use.

**Whistling Dixie**

There were actually four surviving tanks from the Two-Eleventh Armored, out of a roster of forty-eight. A fifth had also manage it to make it to the rally point, but not this far. That left Jeannette's own Two-Four-Two, Wilder in One-Two-Four, HQ-Three with Sergeant Major Roberts, and Three-Four-Three under Guzman. Some of the "tail" of the battalion had made it; a few ammo and fuel vehicles, the battery of light artillery. The non-tank HQ vehicles, both of them, had apparently been stepped on by a Zaku. _Serves the major right for trying to gloryhound._

They were moving north, along Interstate 59. The 215 Mechanized Infantry had linked up with the 233 Mechanized Infantry, then dug in. They had managed to fend off a Zeon attack, at the cost of a hundred and twenty killed and fifty-nine wounded, as well as a dozen and a half vehicles. The survivors of the 211 Armored had lead the countercharge as the Zeke mobile suits had threatened to break the line, costing them Lieutenant Cruz and One-Two-One in exchange for a pair of Zakus. The Zekes had broken contact and started moving away from them, towards Dallas, and they hadn't really had the means to chase. A determined attack by either side would have been a bad idea.

Then a bolt from the blue as Zeon forces dropped from the skies over the East and West Coasts, taking them almost entirely in a day. Now they had to get out the trap they found themselves in. The EFGF was a peacekeeping force, mostly infantry, lightly mechanized. It was currently ill-suited to fighting Zeon's Earth Attack Force. The best thing to do now for most of them was to go to ground and act as a resistance, or for the mechanized units, get out of the way.

"The locals don't seem happy about this, Sarge." Ritchie and Cat were poking their heads out of their hatches for the road march too, while she stood in the commander's hatch, hands on the 12.7mm, keeping the barrel pointed up 45 degrees.

"Would you be, Cat? The Zekes practically destroyed Seattle." Another little town in North Louisiana, turned out to watch them go by. No cheers. They were well-ordered, but a unit retreating has its own special air, just as a unit advancing. "They've got nothing good to look forward to right now." The tank was trundling along at a good fifty klicks an hour, about as fast as they could go without tearing up the road. Ahead and behind were Wolfhound IFVs. The 215's commander had assigned them to her, as her own little unit, and in no uncertain terms explained to the Wolfhound commanders that if it cost them their vehicles they had to keep that tank intact. Jeannette scanned the sky again.

Apparently Zeon's Dopps weren't doing well; training inside space colonies was a bad way to teach people to fly jet aircraft in a large-scale dogfight, a colony was just too small a space. The EFAF's Flyarrows and Toriaries could have ruled the skies if their bases didn't keep getting overrun by Zakus. As it was...the sky was probably neutral. Maybe. If you squinted hard enough.

_Like the weather. _Jeanette almost snorted. One of the first lessons of a soldier was that weather wasn't neutral. If you were lucky it was the enemy to both sides equally, but the weather was still always the enemy. Clouds rolling in, this time of year...early for thunderstorms, but rain was possible. Not a problem as long as they stayed to hard-surface roads. The rain would ground Zeon's planes, too; they weren't equipped or probably trained for all-weather attack. That made Jeannette snort in amusement. _It's always nice weather on Earth, right? Just like the colonies?_ Ritchie had caught a cold from standing out in the rain without a raincoat his first week with her track. A lot of Zekes were doing the same, she guessed.

"Something funny Sarge?" Ritchie asked.

"Remember that cold you caught? All these Zekes on their first trip to Earth, never seen rain or thunderstorms before. Getting wet, catching colds, staring in mute confusion at the ocean. A lot of 'em probably can't swim. God help them come winter, they've never seen snow, they have no idea what it can do." Jeannette replied, smirking. "Mother Nature's revenge."

"Right now she's the only defense the planet has."

* * *

Trading space for time. Arkansas now. The tanks were the limiting factor, the hover-based Wolfhounds and Bloodhounds could have road-marched to Canada in three or four days. The Zekes, bless their gravity-less lack of souls, were content to stay out of the cold and frozen wastes, or what they imagined to be the cold and frozen wastes. Their experience of Earth weather was turning out to be a significant culture shock, and the Zekes were more scared of it then they perhaps should have been. That was fine with Jeannette.

If they made it far enough north and could find an airport suited to handle one, they might just be able to catch a Medea out of this whole damn mess even.

"Two-Eleven Three, Two-Fifteen Actual," her earpiece said. That was her new callsign, on the much-reduced communications net of the 211 Armored.

Jeanette dropped into the turret and shut the hatch to reduce the ambient noise level. "Two-Four-Two here, go for message."

"We have an EFAF rescue beacon fifteen klicks off our route. I'm giving you three Wolfhounds and five hours to check it out while we make pitstop. Be at the command vehicle in two-zero mikes."

* * *

"Little landing strip. Privately owned. Think it was somebody's personal estate from the mansion there." Jeannette was pointing to a map tablet. Thank god those still worked; paper maps would have driven everyone mad, because they had long since passed the edges of the area they would have had good ones. A good map was the first step to surviving whatever plan you had to execute in the soldiering business. "No idea if it's big enough to land a sick military plane at. We go there. We check it out, carefully. We come back." She highlighted a route. "This route, unless the bridge is out. Then Wolfhound Three will find a ford for the tank while the other two proceed to this point. We link up and proceed to the objective."

Four nods, the three Wolfhound commanders and the infantry platoon leader. The infantry louie outranked her, but the colonel had given her the op so she was in charge until he said otherwise. And the tank had as much firepower as the rest of them put together, considering the infantry had shot out their supply of LAWs and guided antiarmor weapons fighting off the Zekes back in East Texas.

"Okay. Let's go. We finish up early and we can catch a little sleep." Sleep was in short supply on the road march, and most of the rest of the unit would be sleeping, refueling, and eating while they were gone. Her group had already gotten chow, at least. She waved them off and moved at a fast trot back to her own vehicle. "Cat, start 'er up."

It was only a muted roar; the turbine used on the 61A3 and later models was softer than you'd think. She climbed up and dropped into the commander's hatch. They were parked in the parking lot of a strip club, of all things, yet another town, this one a bit larger. "Rich, how we fixed for ammo?"

"Full load, Sarge. Didn't let Cat go in and shoot off a few rounds." Ritchie replied.

"Kid, I outrank you." Cat grumbled as he guided the tank onto the street.

"Tell you what, Cat, if we make to it Canada I'll show you a few moves. Took pole-dancing classes a couple of years." Jeannette said.

Ritchie sputtered out a confused noise that might have started as a "What?" but his brain wouldn't work properly, turning his head to look at her from the gunner's seat. Cat jerked the vehicle left a moment before getting it back under control. "Sarge, what the hell? For real?"

Jeannette smirked at her gunner through the hatch. "It's good exercise. You ever tried hanging on to a metal pole with only your legs? Takes a lot of strength. Cat, I'm sending you our route, it'll pop up on your screen in a moment." She started whistling to herself and ignored the strangled noises coming from the gunner's seat.

The trip took about an hour. "Wolf Three, circle around that stand of white pine and run along the back until you're even with the hangers, then dismount your infantry to check it. Wolf Two and Wolf One, flank the strip behind that hill. We'll move parallel to the road. Go."

"We got a problem here," Wolf Three's voice came back after a few minutes. "Zeon transport plane, the rotor'd thing and not the Gaw. And some things that look like attack helos."

"Look like, Wolf Three?"

"You've seen a Dopp, does that look it was designed by anyone sane? It's got a big pair of rotors on top and stub wings mounting weapons." Wolfhound Three replied. "They've also got a Gunperry and some folks in Feddie uniforms under guard."

"Figures. Wolf Two, get your Talon team out so they can use the hill." The Talon was the EFGF's man-portable SAM, and its passive infrared guidance still worked with Minovosky interference, not that there was any here. "We'll try to catch them on the ground. Leave the transport to me. Try not to hit the friendlies. Only hit the Gunperry if it starts moving. On my command." She switched to the intercom. "We're hitting a Zeke airbase. Cat, that nice tree-lined road? Parallel it at twenty-five meters and get us to the edge of the tarmac. Load HE."

"Loading." Ritchie replied.

They had three hundred meters to go, and knowing the rough radius at which a tank could be heard or seen...Jeannette stood out of the hatch, her hands on the 12.7 again, and gave the command at two hundred. "Attack."

Immediately small arms chattered from ahead, followed by the loud _brrrrrt_ of a five-round burst from the 60mm main gun of a Wolfhound. There was a rising whine as well; someone was trying to start up a jet engine. They came around the corner and beheld chaos, Zeon-uniformed personnel running around in a panic. None of them even seemed to notice the tank.

"Target transport aircraft, one o'clock!" She swung the 12.7 towards a clump of Zeon uniforms with rifles and opened fire. The turret traversed several degrees, throwing off her aim, but half the group was down and the rest were scattering. Several of them ran directly into the path of Wolfhound One, which ran them down. Then the concussion of the 150mm gun firing drove the breath from her lungs. The Zeon plane...was it even a plane? It didn't have wings, just big rotors, but it had a plane-like body-_Doesn't matter!_ She swung the 12.7 again. "Rich! Take the helos!"

Wolfhound One took her target away from her with another _brrrrrt_, and the one helo whose rotors were spinning exploded as Wolfhound Two fired as well. Wolfhound Three was engaging Zeon soldiers trying to shelter in the smaller of two hangers with its coaxial gun chattering away while its infantry complement flanked the building to both sides. She found a target, finally, a Zeon soldier stopping to aim a tube-like device at Wolfhound Two, and fired. The burst of 12.7 rounds threw him back several feet and did terrible things to his body.

Again the 150mm fired and one of the helos jumped about ten meters in the air before scattering itself over a large area. Jeanette spotted another Zeon soldier trying to run out of the larger hanger and swung the 12.7mm around, firing a burst just as his hands went up. _Damn! _Wolfhound One and Wolfhound Two had disposed of the other two helicopters, and the big transporter was listing drunkly onto one of its larger rotors as it burned. Ritchie played the coax across the smaller hanger while Wolfhound One grounded briefly to dismount its squad of infantry, who advanced quickly towards the Gunperry, trading shots with some Zeon soldiers who weren't very smart along the way. Wolfhound One's gunner took offense to that and annihilated both the Zekes and the low hedge they were using as concealment with another _brrrrrt_.

"Don't assault the hanger, keep them suppressed." Jeanette shouted into the all-hands channel, to make herself heard. "I'm not wasting good soldiers on these bastards. We'll bring the damn building down on them." She switched back to the intercom. "Rich, we reloaded?"

"Ready to rock, Sarge!" Ritchie replied.

"Put one through the hanger doors!" She added a burst from the 12.7 at a window she thought she'd seen movement in. Wolfhound Two took a whole corner of the building out with a spiteful _brrrrrt_ after some rifle rounds struck sparks from its armor. Then the 150mm settled the argument, punching through the hanger doors, the fuze activating several meters beyond since it was intended to deal with concrete fortifications or bunkers. All the remaining doors and windows blew out, even the big doors on the front, which came off their tracks with a sequel of stressed metal and fell forward.

Wolfhound Three's squad advanced. They found a few unconscious Zekes in the hanger, and a few who indicated they wanted to offer no further resistance, but mostly dead ones.

* * *

"Will it fly?" The Gunperry hadn't taken any stray rounds bigger than a rifle bullet, but that didn't mean it was okay.

"Have to check the bird out, Sergeant," the head of the flight crew replied. "What outfit you from?"

"What's left of the Two-Eleven Armored, the Two-Fifteen Mechanized, and the Two-Thirty-Three Mechanized." Jeannette grimaced and took off the soft helmet, revealing her blonde pixie-cut. Armor crew had to have short hair lest it get caught in something, and besides she actually liked the look. "Mostly the latter two, they're still above half strength."

The Gunperry pilot, an EFAF lieutenant whose skin tone suggested his family was from India, sighed. "We were supposed to meet up with part of the Two-Five-Two Armored, but we ran into these assholes. Those helos look silly but they're fast. Suppose we're lucky they wanted to see what kind of supplies we had aboard."

_The 252 made it?_ They'd been in Dallas at some point, until the Zekes had thrown a mobile suit battalion that way. That was too much for any tank battalion to cope with, and they'd not been heard from again. "They were in Dallas when the Zekes dropped a mobile suit battalion on the place. We didn't know any of them had gotten out."

The lieutenant made a face. "We weren't sure either, honestly, but we couldn't get recon to check. Hence only the one Gunperry." One of his subordinates on the crew of the Gunperry waved him over.

The infantry lieutenant replaced him. "We've got about a dozen and a half prisoners, nobody higher than a corporal. The were setting up an advanced base, apparently, for tactical air, happened to stumble on the Gunperry."

Jeannette grimaced. "Looking for us?"

"They won't say that, but there's Dopps and another airlifter due in a couple hours. Radio silence, they knew people were around to hear them talk if they weren't careful. Has to be us." The lieutenant paused a moment. "What are we going to do with them?"

"Leave 'em here. Can't take them. Not going to shoot them, we're Feddies, we don't kill the helpless." Jeannette grimaced. "If you haven't already, get on the horn with the colonel and let him know the bad news."

She turned and started to move towards the Gunperry; knowing the colonel he'd recall them and get them moving again at once, so the Air Force pukes didn't have much time to decide if they needed a ride out.


	3. The Worst Road Trip You'll Ever Take

We know that Zakus, at least the early model ones, can be taken down with relatively small explosive warheads; _The Gravity Front_ showed it. If it helps, assume that the Zaku models in the story are C-types with the land-combat J-type and the traditional F-type space combat model not yet widely available. Those _do_ have composite armor to resist HEAT warheads. Mongoose is canon, incidentally, from one of the MSV series.

Remember always: the enemy is probably hurting too.

**The Worst Road Trip You'll Ever Take  
**

"Get some hustle in it!" Cat wasn't a sergeant anymore but the voice was harder to take away than the rockers. "Come on, you've refueled Sixty-Ones until you could do it in your sleep. Now's your damn chance."

Ritchie muttered something from the gunner's seat. He wasn't actually awake though. Jeannette smiled tiredly in the general direction of her gunner, who had sworn that it was impossible to sleep inside the tank. Get tired enough, sleep anywhere, she'd replied. His helmet was off and she had to briefly resist the urge to ruffle his short brown hair. _Thinking crazy shit. I need to sleep too._ Day six of their odyessy. There was a big black mark on the front turret slope where a Dopp had hit them with some cannon shells the day before, just before said Dopp had eaten a Talon MANPADS.

It had been a neat bit of shooting, on the Dopp pilot's part. But not even the Red Comet himself would have been able to take down a tank with 20mm HEI. Some things simply weren't possible without the proper tools.

Jeannette stretched and wished she'd packed a pillow or something. Probably would have caught some crap for it, but it'd make the catnaps easier. You had to sleep when you got the chance. The war wouldn't make time to your schedule. She leaned her head back against the edge of the turret hatch and was asleep in moments.

* * *

"You wouldn't think it would be this boring, being hunted." The 61A3 was buttoned up. Rain drummed on the hatches.

"We're not, that's why you're bored Rich." Cat responded. They had a flight of Flyarrows overhead, and the weather served to the advantage of the EFAF pilots. Only a very brave Dopp driver would tangle with an EFAF pilot all-weather. "Still don't get why they haven't sent in the Zakus."

"It's a long way to walk, once the air force got their shit together. Even for a Zaku." Jeannette swept her optics around. "What scares me is they might drop an HLV or five near us."

"Please don't say stuff like that, Sarge." Ritchie requested seriously. "It-shit, my IR just fritzed."

Immediately the other two checked their own. "Mine's down too." Cat confirmed.

"Two-Eleven Three in the blind, encountering Minovsky interference." Jeannette tried the all-hands.

"Two-Fifteen Seven, co-." "Two-Thir-One Two, copy." Only the two nearest platoons of Wolfhounds could hear her already. Not good.

"Cat, get us off the road." They veered on to the grass and sped up. The march column was waking up to it. The Wolfhounds looked nothing like their namesakes, except now; buttoning hatches, guns elevating and traversing back and forth as the gunners sought targets, they seemed to be shaking the water from their muzzles and scenting the air.

Which was when Jeannette caught a flash of orange out of the corner of her eye. "Traverse right!" She checked her optics. "Shit. Target HLV, range-" the laser wasn't reading out quickly, probably the rain, "fifty-four hundred!" Then to the all hands channel. "HLV, bearing zero-nine-eight!" Someone was being awful gutsy trying to land right on top of them. _Of course gutsy has worked for the Zekes..._

"Sabot up, long shot Sar-"

"Do what you are goddamn told!" Jeannette snapped.

"On the way!"

* * *

"We're hit!"

The announcement caused her stomach to drop, but fortunately not the HLV. It did start tipping though. All First Lieutenant Cima Garahau could do about it was think dark thoughts about Major Garand and his plan to crush the last mechanized resistance in Central North America.

"Getting her stable..." The HLV wobbled, but it was maintaining altitude. That was a good sign.

Abstractly. _Dying in a crash or gunned down struggling out of it would be a fitting end to someone who delivered the G3 warheads in person. The Feddies would love it._

"Final approach!" The HLV was still wobbly, but not as bad. The landing was much rougher than it probably should have been, though, and the HLV tipped twenty degrees or more. Her normally fine sense of direction and orientation, necessary for space combat, wasn't as solid under gravity. Cima wasn't used to it yet.

"Marines, sound off!" Unless something had gone very wrong, none of the other landing teams would be in radio contact yet. Her Zaku's harness had not disengaged properly and her right arm was still trapped; she was already working to free it with the left. Tugging wasn't working so she reached for her heat hawk.

"Li!" "Seydlitz!" "Falkenhayn!" "Dickens!" "Grimsson!"

"Equipment and injuries?" Cima started sawing at the shoulder harness with the unpowered heat hawk.

"Seydlitz here. Bazooka got jammed into the wall and bent with that landing." No one else spoke up, so they were okay. Or they didn't yet know about their damage. Light flooded into the HLV as one of the other Zakus kicked the door open.

The harness snapped off. Cima put out that arm to catch herself as her Zaku stumbled, but she'd been expecting it. "Out, quick. The Feddies are probably on their way."

Dickens was first out the door, and then swore loudly. "They're already here!" Even through the armor of her Zaku she heard the sound of several autocannons, and the louder _spang_ of shells bouncing off Dickens' Zaku. But her Marines were well-trained, and she could not help a surge of pride as Dickens' 120mm gun thundered back and he broke to one side to clear the door so the rest of them could get out.

She was third out; she'd been hung up, but closer to the door than most. Right as she was exiting the door she caught it; a 150mm shell that tore the Zaku's shoulder shield off cleanly. Cima sprayed 120mm HEAT where she thought the fire was coming from, and kept moving. To sit still now would be death.

* * *

"Hit! Damn, just messed up the shield! Hold fire-" Jeannette waited until she saw movement in the hatch again. "Fire!" The first Zaku driver had fired fifty meters to her right; uncomfortable, but an inch is a good as a mile.

The other 150mm cannon roared. A single sabot round, a 75mm dart of depleted uranium wrapped in plastic, exited the barrel, and the plastic fell away. Then the arrow flew, straight and true-

"Hit! Upper chest...he's going down! Kill!" The Zaku's internal gyroscopes and balance system had been fatally damaged, and it could not remain standing with just the pilot's control inputs. The call went out to pull back. "Cat, pull us back two hundred and then get us out of here for the rally point."

"Sarge, permission to fire. Zaku on the left." Ritchie said.

"Last two shots. Make it count, Rich." Jeanette replied, swinging her turret optics around.

Ritchie didn't fire both barrels. He knew that wouldn't be enough for this bunch of Zekes, they were good. His aim point drifted left slightly, and he fired. The Zaku flinched away from the sabot round, ducking-

Straight into the second round, which passed directly through its mono-eye and exited the back of the Zaku's "helmet" in a blast of shrapnel and destroyed electronics."

"Hit!" Jeanette peered at it through her optics. "We'll call that a damage, but I don't think we'll see him again. Nice shooting, herding him into that round."

"Didn't think he'd duck." Ritchie grimaced to himself. "Meant for a chest shot."

* * *

Cima winced as she heard the round tear through her suit. "Oh, well-played," she whispered softly to the tank with the black mark on its turret. The backup cameras came on, but lacking any magnification or other spectral types they were difficult to fight a mobile suit with. They also had no proper integration with the suit's targeting systems. And those Federation Wolfhounds had blown several of them clean off her Zaku.

She swung her 120mm machinegun around and fired at the tank anyways. Zeon Marines. Fight with what you have. Adapt and overcome. "Fire team Charlie, advance. At the double!"

* * *

"Holy shit!" Cat's comment was barely audible over the sound of tree parts and rocks raining down on the 61A3 as it swerved sharply to avoid a shell crater. "I think you pissed him off, Rich!"

"They're not supposed to be able to shoot worth a damn without their main cameras! Or run!" Ritchie swore. "HEAT up!" The Federation didn't typically issue HEAT rounds; they were the only tank-using power on Earth, after all, and their 61-series tanks used highly effective composite armor that basically negated the threat. Zeon's Zakus, however, did not have composite armor; they used a titanium alloy, extremely effective against hard rounds, but lacking in the mechanical and thermal characteristics to protect it from the superheated metal jet of a HEAT penetrator. They would probably get it, soon. But they didn't have it now.

So the 61A3 tank had four rounds of High-Explosive Anti-Tank. Precious. Not to be wasted. And would pierce the armor on any part of a Zaku with ease. "On the way!"

"Hit! Hit!" Jeanette whooped. "He's going over this time!"

* * *

Cima saw the rounds coming, and made an effort to dodge; but the backup cameras and their damage made it looks like a slideshow, and the tank gunner did their work well. Still, they were going to hit her suit's legs, which were specifically designed to withstand tank fire-

Her caution board lit up like a Christmas tree and her suit pitched over onto its damaged face, almost instantly. She had no time to assess what happened, only enough time to follow her training: pull your arms in, across your chest, so you don't slam your hands into anything and injure yourself.

"Lieutenant!" Falkenhayn called.

"I'm all right!" She checked her diagnostics and caution, board, and resisted the urge to groan. "I lost both knees." She pulled her Zaku up on its hands, and got the gun up; at least she could defend herself, and her gun still worked. _Major Garand_, Cima thought darkly, _there will come a time..._

* * *

"Target Command Zaku! Direct front!" Another team of Zakus had cut them off from the main body, and now they were dancing with them in a running gunfight through trees and fields. Some genius with a pair of commander's radio fins on his Zaku had just wandered into Jeannette's line of sight, and she was damned if he was going to literally _walk_ in front of her and live to tell.

"On the way! Reloading!"

Two rounds, straight through the dots that showed her where the guns were aiming. The Zaku went down in a tangle of limbs as its cockpit was pierced. "Confirmed kill! Cat, back across that field!"

They were in the open for fifteen seconds. It felt like eternity several times over. "Thank god for treelines." Zakus were great in the open field, ducking and weaving, high vantage points. They were great in cities, where they could appear without warning from corners, weapons already raised, or get into close combat against machines that could not fight back.

They were _terrible_ at forest fighting, where the canopy blocked their view of the ground and the trees were a major obstacle to movement. A mobile suit could knock over a tree, no problem. But it slowed them down immensely, having to knock over several with every step, and it made it obvious to anyone within several kilometers where the mobile suit was.

Tanks weren't much better in the mobility department, but they could try to pick their way through the trees if they were careful. It sucked up gas like there was no tomorrow, though. And they could see the danger coming. "Rich, how we fixed for gas?"

"Quarter. No chance of getting a buffalo over here to refuel, I'm guessing?" Ritchie replied.

Jeannette didn't bother to answer. The Minovsky battlefield had wrecked so much of what modern soldiers depended on. Unreliable radio alone was a huge step backwards, a return to Napoleon. Far too easy now to be lost and alone, unable to call for help. Coordination was almost impossible. One of the advantages the huge Zeke mobile suits had was they could better use line-of-sight comms like lasers, simply because being so tall less got their way.

"Mont-ge, is that you?"

She swung her optics around quickly. "Sergeant Major!" It was the Sergeant Major's tank. "Glad to see you."

"Follow me, Sergeant."

* * *

They'd last fought around Chattanooga, and then headed up through Nashville and Saint Louis. They'd had to skirt away from Chicago, already in Zeke hands, and were now somewhere in Iowa, headed up the 35 from Des Moines.

The Zekes had followed them every step of the way. They'd managed to confirm the unit they were up against; two companies of the 1st Independent Marine Battalion. They had lost two more tanks, as well; Guzman had been killed by a Zaku, and Wilder's tank had broken down in Davenport. That was in addition to the remains of the two mechanized infantry battalions being down to something more like two companies; the actual infantry had lost less, and kept up in civilian vehicles, buses mostly. The Wolfhounds were running out of ammunition for their 60mm cannon, and there could only be one or two anti-armor missiles for them left in the entire force.

Jeannette had twelve rounds left in her tank. Not literally, mind. The ammunition vehicles they'd had with them had the standard load of ammo to start, four vehicles, two hundred rounds each. Each tank carried forty-two rounds as well. They'd taken all the ammo from Wilder's tank too.

The problem was, only so much of it was useful against Zakus. Canister was pointless, and HE might actually do damage by the simple mechanism of hitting complex mechanical and electronic machines with hammers enough, but it wouldn't penetrate armor. Only ten rounds of Sabot, and two of the precious HEAT shells.

Bad weather and Minovsky interference was ruining the ability of EFAF aircraft to support them, as well. Without their radars, diving through the cloud cover and rain was incredibly dangerous. Only the low-flying, slow Mongoose ground-support planes could come in like this, with bare seconds to acquire their targets. And they were taking hideous losses against Zakus firing AA to do it.

_We have huge numbers of bodies to throw at the problem, of course._ It was a bizarre comfort. All her adult life Jeannette had been part of the greatest military machine in the history of the world, and even now, _in extremis_, the Earth Federation fundamentally had more soldiers than Zeon had bullets. Zeon could only win by tiring the rest of humanity from the fight. And given the way Jeannette literally shook with rage thinking about allowing people like Degwin and Gihren Zabi to continue to live, after they had killed eighty percent of humanity space and well over ten percent of humanity on earth, that was not going to happen any time soon.

"Zaku, six o'clock!" Ritchie warned. The fifth time in three days.

"Target! Cat, get us around and off the road!" Jeannette switched to radio, but then spotted one of the Wolfhounds launching a red flare. They weren't ready for the Minovsky battlefield, but they were learning fast. Soldiering produced a greater percentage of history buffs than other professions, perhaps because it was exciting, and there had been ways to do things before reliable radio.

One of the Wolfhounds put the Zaku's monoeye out with a brief burst. It was a hell of a shot at nearly four kilometers with the small gun. "Two Fi-en El-en One, o-of ammo." It broke away for the front of the column at maximum speed for the hover vehicle, which was nearly two hundred kilometers an hour.

A flight of Mongoose attack planes came in, firing their 75mm cannon. The Mongoose had HEAT ammo as standard, but their smaller guns simply weren't as effective. They could only penetrate parts of a Zaku and had trouble definitively killing them. Nevertheless they kept trying.

Two of them went down in flames from return fire from the Zaku's buddies, but the rest managed to put it down. The column of vehicles picked up the pace to keep ahead of the Zekes.

* * *

Commander (Acting) of Marines Cima Garahau was listening to one of her immediate subordinates with growing annoyance. "And his justification?" Major Garand and his regulars were mostly dead, leaving the Marines on their own. It served the Major right, considering in the process of getting himself killed he'd also gotten Commander Bohr killed as well, leaving Cima the ranking officer with the Commander's dying words.

"They were Earthnoids." The lieutenant was obviously nervous. He was reporting a violation of standing orders. Garma Zabi had just been posted to the Earth Attack Force and he had changed standing orders significantly. Zeon had landed on the planet and realized, quickly, that they had bitten off significantly more than they realized. Eight billion people with hate in their hearts for everyone from Side Three could not be ruled through fear. The destruction of Seattle had been a huge mistake, compounding their problems. Garma had made it clear; be nicer to the locals before they murder us all in our beds.

So one of her pilots had decided he didn't like the layout of streets in a town and rearranged them by stomping about with his Zaku. And Cima had to deal with it. "How many did he kill?"

"None, it seems. Several were injured." The lieutenant was glad about that. He really didn't want to have found out how his CO would react to that serious a violation.

"Arrest Pilot Officer Djgoverski. He carries a sidearm, yes?" The lieutenant nodded uncertainly, equally aware he didn't know where this was going, he probably didn't wish to, and he was going to find out anyways. "Inform the townsfolk they have both Djgoverski and his pistol to do with as they please for thirty minutes and make both available to them, separately. After that, if he is still alive, secure him for transport to California Base and proper court martial. If not, secure his body for transport home." Cima tapped her small clipboard against her palm, side-on. Perhaps she should get a swagger stick or riding crop for the gesture instead, it seemed to have a useful calming effect on her. "Dismissed."

Part of taking Chicago had been to get access to its airport and the adjacent spaceport, which should have helped her with aerial recon and resupply. But the Federation and the weather frustrated that plan. The EFAF no longer had to scramble out of the way of Zeon drop operations and was bringing its full weight to bear. Depp Rogg heavy bombers, Toriares fighters, Mongoose ground attack aircraft, even some of the Federation's newest and best Tin Cod heavy multirole fighters were making the Chicago occupation a nightmare, and playing havoc with her two and a half companies of Zeon Marines. Cima hadn't seen a friendly aircraft in a week and hadn't been resupplied in five days as Federation planes seemingly blasted every bridge, railway, and highway in North America. Only bad weather was saving her Zakus from a similar fate.

_What fool thought we could fight the Federation on its terms, on its turf? What fool sent us to conquer a planet when it was clear they had no idea what that actually meant?_ Commander Bohr's words came back to her. _Senior officers stare at maps too much, and so are prone to lose their appreciation of concepts of time and space, failing to grasp the meaning and scale of the distances they want crossed, the time it takes orders to reach fighting troops. On the map, after all, it's only centimeters._ The Earth Attack Force confronted that problem now, painfully.

Her mission remained unchanged. Eliminate the last Earth Federation mechanized unit in North America. Opposing was what they estimated as a battalion of mechanized infantry and a reinforced platoon of tanks. It did not sound daunting on paper, but these were the survivors of those who had fought the initial decoy drop. They were very lucky, very skilled, or both, evidenced by their merely being alive.

* * *

Jeannette was passing ammo to Ritchie, who slotted it into the storage bins. Before her were two guys on the ammo truck. For once, something had worked; Gunperrys from Winnipeg had been able to lift food and ammo to them and evacuate their wounded. They had made it as far as Minneapolis with its Territorial Army armory, and the sky was clearing. Aerial recon said the Zakus were coming in from the east, having taken a different route in the last few days. The citizens of the city were streaming north, though the local Territorial Army unit had elected to fight and the infantry had been able to restock on antiarmor weapons. The Territorials had old vehicles, tracked 59A5 IFVs with no missiles, but their infantry teams could fire a LAW as well as anyone.

"Sarge, I'm not crazy about this plan to hide on the bottom floor of a building. The Zekes could drop it on us, pretty easy." They were in a parking garage, bottom floor. Finding one that would actually fit the tank had been lucky. And Ritchie had a point.

"The building will take four or five shots. The tank will take one, maybe two if we're lucky, and Zakus can't fire in less than three-round burst." Jeannette replied. "It'll work. We're just here to draw them into the infantry's rocket barrage."


	4. The Battle of Saint Paul

**The Battle of Saint Paul  
**

"When you think we'll see them?" Ritchie asked.

It was dusk. The 61A3 was parked in the center of the parking garage, with a good view down the main highway. Especially after the Territorial Army guys had demo'd a couple buildings to improve the view. "Dawn. They won't come in at night, not if they have a shred of brains. Urbanized area is infantry's playground, hide and seek."

"They gotta know our IR doesn't work by now. That makes night better." Cat objected. He had an unlit cigarette in his mouth where he leaned on the tank, but knew he'd catch hell for lighting it. Sound and light discipline would matter after dark.

"Against us, yeah, but not against the Poor Bloody Infantry. IR don't see through concrete walls. Fabric curtains maybe, but not walls. They'd get bushwhacked every step, they're just too big and can't hide at all. Better to come in at us when hiding is hardest, minimize their disadvantage." Jeannette paused and ran her hands through her hair. It occurred to her she hadn't showered in fifteen days, shortly after she felt all the gunk in her hair. "They'll come in fast, too. Will want to get into town, near us, so the Airedales stop raining crap on them." A low rumble in the distance and flashes on the horizon; the Depp Roggs were keeping busy. The chances of actually hitting a Zaku with high-altitude unguided bombing were remote, but it forced them to stay in the cockpit, alert, and awake rather than sleeping or getting chow or properly gathering around a map to brief the attack they would make. These were all worthy goals.

"What if they pull a Seattle?" Ritchie said. "Knock the whole place down."

Jeannette shook her head. "Seattle took a whole regiment, most of three days, and they still didn't do it too thoroughly. This place is smaller but so are they. They've got a couple of companies, no easy resupply, and they're shooting off ammo a lot. Don't think they can afford to just pew without a care." Tracers over the horizon emphasized the point as the Zakus tried to fend off a wing of Tin Cods. "Hell, maybe the air force will convince them this is a bad idea."

"Never happen, Sarge." Cat said, sadly. "If the Airedales were that good we wouldn't be here."

* * *

"The Minovsky count still isn't high enough to fritz the IR," Ritchie noted. They didn't really have a way to measure Minovsky saturation directly, an obvious oversight. Once again the tank was sealed down. It was parked as far back in the parking garage as they could get it, minimizing the distance it would be easily visible to the tall Zakus. They'd also spent some of the morning moving parked cars to provide some visual clutter and screen their position. "They wouldn't come in without it, would they?"

Jeannette shook her head. Zekes were supposed to never fight without Minovsky cover according to EFF experience. But people could be unpredictable. "Two-Eleven Three. Comms check."

"Loud and clear Two-Eleven Three," came back the voice from battalion CP.

She saw Ritchie stiffen up. "Zaku, twelve-thirty, range ten kay plus." Relatively flat terrain and few trees meant the Zekes were spotted earlier. She checked her own optics, zooming in and panning.

There. "Two-Eleven Three, contact. Zakus on the highway, ten klicks. Closing fast." They were, moving at a run. Back to the intercom. "Load sabot. Target the rear Zaku. Hold fire and don't lase them." Nobody really knew if Zakus could detect laser rangefinding or laser paint for missile guidance. "It'll take them a few minutes to get in range." A Zaku's top speed at a run was about ninety clicks an hour. They moved at one point five kilometers a minute. The tank' s effective range against a Zaku-sized target was three kilometers. It would take the Zakus four minutes and forty seconds to enter her range from ten klicks out. She started counting Zakus, switching back to the radio. "Two-Eleven Three, enemy strength at two reinforced companies. Count thirty." That was supposedly a few more than their estimates, but it wasn't like they'd ever lined up so anyone could count them.

They kept closing. "If they just go right by, should we care?" Ritchie asked. "I mean, we want them in the town."

"Hush. They're slowing up. Think they realized we demo'd some buildings..." A monoeye swung in their direction. "Fire! Cat, get us out of here!" Two shots flew straight and true, but the blast overpressure did terrible things to the screen of cars they'd set up, lifting a sedan up and throwing it over a meter. "Hit! Hit! Damn, he's still up, his armor deflected one." They exited out the back of the building and swung right. Jeannette struggled to keep her optics on the Zakus. Over to the radio. "Two-Eleven Three, we just pissed them off. Moving into town."

"We got one after us!" Ritchie warned. A moment later the tank's guns thundered as he fired before the Zaku could. Neither round was well aimed; one bounced off a shoulder plate, the other shot off into the blue yonder. The return burst went into the building beside them as the Zaku's aim was thrown off by the hit, and the concrete and glass exploding outward provided a good screen for a few moments.

Ritchie had fired without orders but Jeannette didn't rebuke him for it; this was one of the cases where firing without orders was very much acceptable. "Load HEAT! Cat, fast as you can, fuck the streets!" The tank speed up, leaving roostertails of pavement as the tracks tore up the street.

"HEAT up!" They swung around a corner, just moments before another Zaku blew the street behind them to shreds with a bazooka round. The shockwave managed to lift the sixty ton tank; not much, just a few centimeters at the rear. It never actually left the ground completely. It was still enough for Ritchie to hit his head and swear, and Jeannette bit her lip while bracing herself, drawing blood.

"Our God who-" Cat started to mutter to himself, as they each reflected on the force it took to lift a sixty ton tank even a little bit.

"_Focus!_" Jeannette snapped. This was how you beat the fear; you didn't give yourself time to think about it. You kept acting, checking your optics, driving, whatever. Do the tasks in front of you. In reflexive performance of actions built up through training was a shield against the raw horror of the destructive power both sides could throw around. Be too busy to be afraid. "Target Zaku, six o'clock!" Nice of the Zekes to help out.

"On the way!" Rich snapped back. They only had six HEAT rounds, and after some discussion had agreed not to dual fire with them; the raw damage output wasn't needed as much as with the Sabot, since there was no part of the Zaku that could protect it from a HEAT shell.

"Hit-cockpit shot! Good sho-TARGET ZAKU!" A second Zeke mobile suit appeared, just in time for the first to get in its way as it fell over.

"The turret traversed a few degrees. "On the way! Reloading!"

It hit high in the chest. "Hit!" This Zaku went over backwards. "Kill!"

Another half-dozen Zakus rapidly filled the street, and the only good thing to be said was they were preventing each other from safely shooting at the tank. "Get us the fuck off this street, Cat!"

The street filled with horizontal smoke trails, moving right to left across. Most of them terminated against a Zaku with the flash of detonating explosives.

* * *

Cima Garahau's command had been reduced from thirty Zakus to twenty-one in under three minutes; in addition to that same damn tank killing two and wrecking the leg of another with a kneecap shot, it had lead a whole fireteam of Marines into a trap where Federation infantry had slaughtered them with shoulder-fired rockets.

_I need an infantry battalion to do this properly._ She bit her tongue to keep from cursing aloud. If she advanced, the Feddies wouldn slowly destroy her unit with ambushes by infantry and armor using the built-up terrain against her mobile suits. If she retreated she would be admitting she could not complete her mission, and would lose at least a few suits to aircraft attack before she reached Chicago. The senseless, or the dishonorable.

That...was an easy choice. These were her Marines. She was responsible for their lives, and the Marines recruited territorially. Even if she somehow lead them into a slaughterhouse and won, she'd never be able to go back to Mahal having gotten the sons and daughters of the colony butchered.

"First Independent, rally on me. We're going to shift a few streets over to see if anyone made it out of the ambush and then retrograde. Slow fire, random, into the buildings. Make the magazine you've got last until we're out of here." That would keep all but the most brave and insane of the Feddie infantry away. "Do it."

Cima was, perhaps a little irrationally, proud of how smoothly they executed her orders. One Marine and one of the regular military Zaku pilots had survived; the easiest way to carry them out was inside their disabled suits. The other suits without living pilots were destroyed in place.

Now she just had to face the music.

* * *

"They retreated." Cat's voice in her ears sounded like he didn't believe it.

Jeannette and Ritchie both opened their hatches to get some fresh air into the tank. The guns sealed themselves pretty well, but there was always a smell of propellent. And a dozen other scents of working heavy machinery, assuming you could smell them over the crew. The tank was technically air-conditioned but it wasn't run often since it made the thermal signature balloon like crazy. "They knew it would be a slaughter, win or lose. So they just...left it alone. Sensible Zekes. Miracle and wonder."

"Are Zekes allowed to do that?" Ritchie wondered. "I mean, all those speeches you hear from the Zabi nutbars, they don't sound like people who know when to fold 'em. Dozle Zabi wouldn't know how to walk away from a fight."

"Gihren and Degwin would. Antisocial Personality Disorder bad enough to order the deaths of billions? They know how to look out for number one. Whether they'd let anyone else do so...that's a different matter. Can't have your pawns surrendering." Jeannette shrugged. "Maybe we got the one guy in the whole Zeke military without a spine, or maybe whoever they've put in charge of the invading Earth thing isn't crazy."

"Sarge, last time you were that pessimistic we had an HLV almost fall on us. Please don't think such thoughts, the Zekes can somehow hear you." Cat's request seemed to be serious.

* * *

"Commander, do come in." Everyone knew the Zabis, by reputation at least. Garma was younger than her, though, and something of an unknown because of his age. He hadn't established much of a reputation for himself.

She approached the surprisingly unassuming desk Garma Zabi had adopted for standing behind, no chair was visible, and saluted. "Reporting as ordered."

Garma's return salute drew her grudging admiration for its perfection. The Zeon Marines prided themselves on being better than the regular military, on parade and on the battlefield, but Garma Zabi seemed to know how to keep his boots shined. "You've made yourself a problem for me, Commander." Garma seemed...quietly amused. "As you represent the first real discipline problem to cross my desk, and I am an inexperienced officer who received this command based on my family name." That was surprisingly candid, and if Garma was anything like his brother Gihren was rumored to be he was telling her this because she was about to be shot and it wouldn't matter in a moment. "Don't look so scandalized. A man must know his limitations. I have three advisors who think I should quietly relieve you and one who wants you court-martialed and shot. Neither of those things are going to happen."

Garma placed his hands behind his back in a classic parade-rest. "My brothers run the war on gusts of emotion. Gihren believes in the power of the revolutionary spirit and can inspire like no other man I have ever seen, but he is not a soldier. Dozle lets his anger get away with him. Conquering Earth will take more than revolutionary zeal, Commander." Garma waved an arm towards his window. "It will take pragmatism, and an ability to show we are not monsters. These are things you have. Your promotion is now permanent. I would like to discuss other matters with you, but your promotion is permanent and any man or woman who argues you did something unseemly at Saint Paul will answer to me regardless of the rest of our conversation."

* * *

There was a sign. Once, it had been for an international border; now it was just a lesser border. And a greater one.

"You are now entering Free Earth." Jeannette couldn't help the grin. "We made it, boys." Ahead, openly showing themselves on a hilltop, were a half-dozen 61A4s in the distinctive royal purple favored by units from the British Isles. "Heads up. Friendlies."

Ritchie had made some additions to the tank; six Zaku silhouettes on both sides of the turret. It wouldn't do for some asshole to be on the wrong side of the tank and miss them, he'd argued. A pair of Wolfhounds, clean and unmarked vehicles in the same color as the A4s, came up, commanders and gunners out of the top hatches. They saw her tank, and God strike her dead, they started _cheering_.

A Command Hound, with the six radio aerials and no top turret, appeared next. It was a few minutes on, and she could make out Winnipeg on the horizon. "Sergeant," a voice said in her ear, "halt and have your crew dismount. Someone wants to talk to them."

She grimaced. They weren't really inspection ready. Still, orders were orders. "Okay boys. Somebody wants to talk. Cat, halt. I know we look like shit, but try to stand to attention at least."

It took them a minute or so to get the tank stopped, and everyone out. And then Jeannette Montange nearly had a heart attack. "General Revil!" She could hardly have been more mortified. Maybe if she'd been out of uniform in the presence of God, it would have been worse, but as it was... She was wearing a tank top that was plastered to her by more than two weeks worth of sweat and grime, and an incredibly filthy pair of uniform pants and boots that she doubted could ever be cleaned. She hadn't showered in sixteen days and hadn't even washed her face in twelve, and she was acutely aware of the oil in her hair from having done engine maintenance four days ago in Des Moines. In front of her was the ultimate authority in the Earth Sphere, and his uniform was immaculate.

"At ease, Captain Montange." He smiled a grandfatherly smile and held out a small package to her. "Your crew is one of the Earth Federation's leading Zaku killers, though I doubt you've had a chance to notice. Go on, open it."

Jeannette grimaced. "I know it's captain's bars, sir. You already called me captain."

"Indeed, Captain. The Federation has need of women of your caliber. Men too, if any happen to show up. Corporal Williams, I'm told you struck a superior officer because he denied you a transfer to the front." Revil had an amused expression on. He held out his hand. "Men like you will win the war, Sergeant. You have atoned for your error."

Cat tried to shake Revil's hand, but fainted halfway through.

* * *

"I can't believe you fainted." Ritchie was still disbelieving after a luxurious hot shower, a clean uniform, twelve hours of sleep, and an awards ceremony where he got the Federal Forces Star in silver. "Brave Federation tank ace faints dead away at the sight of the brass."

"Lay off him, Rich," Jeannette said. "He'd never seen a general before, much less Revil himself." She was looking much better herself, with her hair combed out into the proper pixie cut rather than the undifferentiated mass and even shiny again. It had taken a few rounds with the shampoo for that. Her new uniform top didn't fit right; it was too tight. Nobody seemed to mind, though, including her. Everybody staring at her bust also got a good look at the Federal Forces Cross in silver after all, and she was okay with that. She'd learned there were only ten other people with five or more Zaku kills in the Federal Forces, and aside from her crew all of them were either EFSF or EFAF. Plus three of those ten others were already dead. Her crew were the only confirmed Zaku-killer aces in the entire EFGF.

"Besides, he gave out promotions like candy. Hell, you jumped a couple ranks Rich." Cat pointed out. "I figured I'd be a corporal for life, then he just makes me a sergeant 'cuz he felt like it..." They had found that out later. Revil had not intended to restore Cat's rank, but had looked him in the eyes and seen...something. So the General had waved his magic wand and made the disciplinary proceedings and the offense that caused them vanish from Cat's records, causing him to be a Sergeant again.

"Army's going to get a lot bigger in the next few months." Jeannette said softly. "They're going to activate the AEF." The AEF was short for the Army of the Earth Federation, a notional organization that existed to deal with the possibility of a draft or with wartime recruitment of people who were only in for the duration of the war. It had a parallel rank structure but looser promotion requirements, so that actively serving soldiers could be promoted in the AEF and fill leadership positions for the wartime military, then go back to normal when it was over. "You'll both be officers before the war's over, trust me."

"You say such mean things to me, Sar-sorry, Cap," Cat grinned, and fiddled idly with his own Federal Forces Star in bronze.


	5. Fires On the Horizon

**Fires On the Horizon  
**

Upstate New York was still covered in snow in early March; it had been or was still being a bad winter. Captain, and Brevet Major, Jeannette Montange peered through a pair of binoculars at a town a few kilometers away. "You know, if there are Zakus in there, you'd think we would be able to see them. They ain't small, and there are only a couple of buildings larger than one story."

Brevet Sergeant and actual Corporal Ritchie Smith surveyed the same area through his gunner's optics. "Spy reports are next to worthless. Minovsky killed communications intelligence in a single moment and sent us all back to the damn dark ages."

"You know, I'm glad he's dead Rich, or I'd be worried about how much you hate the guy." Jeanette observed, ducking back down into the tank. She switched to infrared and panned her optics. "What about that hot spot at two-thirtyish?"

"The warehouse? Suppose it's big enough to hide one, but not sure how they'd get it in there." Ritchie zoomed in, looking for windows or open doors. There were none, but there was- "Hold the phone. There's something on the roof."

"Remote sensor pod." Jeannette nodded to herself. "Zekes or guerrillas probably. Mikey," she addressed her new driver, Michael Miller, "take the watch for a bit. Holler if you see something, you two." She clambered out of the tank and down into the snow, nodding to a runner. They were radio-silence and so someone had to physically go around passing orders. "Take the Command Hound, round up the captains and platoon leaders. Be back in twenty mikes or less."

Jeannette adjusted her gloves and rubbed at her nose a moment to warm it up some. Technically the command vehicle was hers, but she preferred to command from her tank. The 61A3 had a knight on a black charger painted on the right side of the turret, the knight's lance impaling a Zaku. The Zaku silhouettes were gone, replaced by a hasty coat of winter camo and six black rings around the gun barrels.

Her unit was a scratch team. A reinforced company of mechanized infantry, mostly reservists, but their Wolfhounds were brand-new 74A6E4, designed for the Minovsky world with shielded electronics and a laser designator for their new Semi-Active Laser Homing missile system. She had a company of tanks, a mixed group of 61A3s and 61A4s. Most of them were like her tank, but one of her platoons had been A4s literally pulled from their concrete pedestals at Aberdeen and smuggled north somehow. And finally a scout platoon, with Type 74 Bloodhounds and infantry scouts.

"Top," she acknowledged with a nod. Cat was now a Brevet First Sergeant, with his own tank. The company First Sergeant was, by tradition, addressed as Top. Cat had walked, his own tank wasn't far. She handed him the binoculars and told him where to look.

"One of ours, an old one, but the Romeo Sierra Mark Four is still in the inventory. Think they know we're here?" Cat asked.

"Probably not, the infrared sensitivity on those things was shit. They can't spot an active vehicle at more than a couple klicks. We're four out. You know anything I wouldn't about guerilla activity around here?" Officers, even ones come up through the ranks, had different sources and informal contacts from enlisted.

"Don't think so. Most of the action is down by the City and Jersey. Upstate ain't populated enough for the Zekes to patrol much, which is why we made it this far. No fighting the good fight without people to fight against." Cat replied. He handed the binoculars back and nodded approvingly to a lieutenant who'd also walked, with their staff sergeant. "Lieutenant."

"Been cooped up in the tank all day. Wanted to get a feel for what it's like outside so I know what the infantry gotta cope with. Theirs and ours both." The lieutenant's explanation drew another approving nod, this time from both Cat and Jeannette. The rest turned up in due course.

Jeannette looked around. "All right, now that we're in Indian country, they didn't send us out here for funsies. Zeon is building a kinetic strike platform in orbit. The space fleet is still mostly bottled up at Luna Two, so they can't do anything about it, and the European spaceports are still out of action after the Zekes crashed stuff into them during the drop. New York's works, so the navy is going to land there and seize it temporarily to hit the platform." She grinned. "As you might guess, we're kind of short on firepower to help out with that, but we can draw the Zekes out of the city and make it easier. So we're supposed to make as much noise as we can, starting here. The town ahead has some military equipment showing. No way to know whose, but we're going to go in route march and see what happens. Be ready to pull back or fight at a moment's notice. Questions?" There were none. "All right, let's do it."

A few moments later she was remounting her tank. "Any change, boys?"

"Nothing twitched, Cap," Michael said.

"All right. Start 'er up and get ready to move out. We're going through." Jeannette swept her optics over the town again, the switched on the radio. "Knight Two, Charger Four, take overwatch on the hill with that stand of trees two klicks out. Harrier, you lead. Knight Three, you follow them. Knight One will follow Knight Three. Chargers except for Four, screen the Knights." The tanks were Knight, the IFVs were Charger, and the scout unit was Harrier. "If you see something you don't like, light it up, but for god's sake use your heads." She switched back to intercom. "Mikey, move us out."

The town stayed buttoned up tight in their buildings. That bothered her. Sure, it was cold out, but thronging crowds meant less likelihood of attack, too. Oh, suicide bombers, maybe, but those would only turn Jeannette's winter-camo tank a nasty shade of pink. Guerrillas were all technically pro-Fed, but in some cases only because they were anti-Zeon. The usual suspects in Africa or Indochina were probably causing trouble for both sides. Having been through the Side 6 insurrection back in 0069, irregulars in general just gave Jeannette the creeps.

"Harrier, break off and check out that warehouse." Better to be sure. A few minutes later the report came back; converted living space, people from New York who'd fled. Nobody knew where the RS Mark 4 had come from; the scout infantry noted it didn't seem to be connected to anything and its power pack was dead. Maybe it had been left behind in the rushed retreat from New York by its three mechanized infantry battalions, to watch for pursuing Zakus.

"Must be nice to run," Michael griped from the driver's compartment.

"Bite your tongue, there's a time and a place for running the same as everything else." Jeannette snapped back. "Talk to me about that when you road-marched across the damn continent."

"Sorry Cap." He managed to sound actually contrite. Only her crew could get away with addressing her as "Cap". To everyone else, even Cat Williams now, she was just "Major". Even if it was a brevet rank it was still a rank, and had to be respected.

* * *

"The Zekes gotta be out here somewhere." Ritchie muttered it with a undertone of annoyance. A recon Flatmouse had spotted a Zeke patrol near them, a few Weasels, a Magella platoon, and a single Zaku. He was panning the gunner's optics back and forth across half of their sector. Each tank in a platoon was assigned to cover a side while in column, the lead tank the front, second tank left, third tank right, last tank rear. Watching was further split up between the gunner and commander, who took responsibility for half their assigned sector each.

"Check yourself, Rich. Time enough for bitching when the shooting's done." Jeannette shook her head. Her gunner wasn't really antsy, Ritchie didn't do antsy. He was mad. His fear of combat was gone, and that left him only itching to kill more of the people who'd gassed his family and used his home as the largest projectile in human history. She shifted in her seat a bit to work out some pain from leaning forward too long. Among other reasons.

"Cramps?" Ritchie had his mic up so his question wouldn't be heard on the intercom. Jeannette gave him A Look, one which conveyed annoyance, amusement, and some curiosity that a male would not only know but also be willing to talk about it. "We're not all cretins, Cap. Some men do know about these things without being terrified or dismissive. My older sister was pretty cool, and I am in the wrong line of work if bleeding freaks me out, y'know?"

Jeannette laughed softly after pushing her own mic up. "That would have been a good line up until the last bit. Unless you intend it only for army girls I suppose."

Ritchie looked thoughtful. "I'll keep that in mind, but I really am asking."

"Yeah. Kind of embarrassed you noticed, been putting up with it for years." If you were enlisted or commissioned in the Federal Forces, you took oral contraceptives. Didn't matter if you were male or female. Enlisted had to get permission to go off them, though before the war it was perfunctory, officers just had to give notice. "The contras still work for me, they just don't stop my monthly dose of suffering like most people."

Ritchie waved it away. "You've been doing it that long? Forget I asked, Cap. You're fine." Then he dropped his mic into place again, and went back to looking for Zekes.

_Doesn't get in the way of you and your vendetta. Christ, Rich, you were a nice kid when you got on my track._ She shook her head fractionally as she moved her own mic back in place, having never moved it very far from her own optics. A few moments later she tried to straighten up and hit her head. "TRAVERSE LEFT! LOAD CANISTER! Mikey-" Then she was on the radio. "Infantry in the woods!"

The tank swerved sharply, a smoke trail passing just in front of it. A fireball blossomed against Knight One-Four, but it responded with a burst from its coaxial machine gun; still in the fight. Ritchie fired the tank's big guns, adding nearly a thousand metal darts to air filled with machine gun fire.

A Zaku clambered upright, or tried to; instead Knight Two's tanks blasted it with a mix of sabot and HEAT while it tried to stand, wrecking it. Harrier Four exploded, hit by a Zeke missile; the Type 74 hovertruck's light armor wasn't enough to protect it. The other hovertrucks wisely ran for it. "Knight Three, flank the wood. Knight One, Knight Two, maximum fire, we're going straight at them. Chargers, covering fire. Keep an eye out for their tanks."

The great trap of infantry against tanks was that they had to kill them in the first volley. If they didn't, if they gave the tanks the chance to fire back, then they had pretty much already lost. Steel nerves, short ranges, and a willingness to fire the rocket and run like hell were essential. These Zeke infantry had none of those. Thus they died.

"Where the hell are the tanks?" Ritchie growled. They had been looking for a Zeke patrol with a unit of tanks, a Zaku, and some infantry. The tanks were missing.

"Anyone have anything that looks like a regular AFV was here?" Jeannette asked over the all-hands, while the infantry dismounted to police the bodies and see if there was anything interesting left of the Zaku. The Zekes tried to destroy them rather than let them fall into Federation hands, and most of them had scuttling charges for their computer gear that went off when the suit's power did unless proper shutdown procedures were followed.

"Wish we could get realtime with a Flatmouse," Michael muttered. The worst thing was they were set up to fight networked like that, but once again Minovsky had ruined everything. Shaping the battlefield had become more literal than before. He brought the tank to a halt without orders at the edge of the wood as the infantry caught up and began to advance into it. It was a foolish armored vehicle indeed that chased infantry into a confined area with lots of cover.

"Charger, don't let them go too far." Jeannette said over the radio. "We break contact and get moving again in thirty minutes."

* * *

"Why _is_ the state capitol in Albany?" Michael asked.

"I'm sure it made sense at the time. Rich, how we loaded?" Jeannette asked.

"Sabot. There's armor around." Albany was too big to just ignore for the Zekes. Three Zakus, some infantry, probably a couple of companies, known armor presence but not what. Overhead photography had its limitations when you couldn't stay and watch. But they would fight under a friendly sky: two squadrons of Toriares interceptors with AWACs support, two flights of Tin Cods for ground attack. The sky would be neutral at worst.

Three Zakus. A lot of the mystique of the Zaku had been lost, in the last month. Federation tankers knew they could kill them now, knew more about how they moved and fought and where to shoot them and where not to, and the early routs that had seen whole battalions killed by a couple of Zakus were never going to happen again.

But a Zaku winning a one versus four against Federation tanks was far too possible. They'd have to be careful. The tank edged around a house, guns elevated, following the infantry at a distance of about a hundred meters. Just behind the tank was a Wolfhound IFV. The local guerrillas had intended to try and bomb the Zeke barracks the night before, and either they'd succeeded beyond their wildest dreams at the cost of mutual annihilation, or they'd failed and gotten rounded up, because they hadn't been in contact.

Jeannette poked her head out of the turret briefly, the dividing line between "city" and "suburb" coming up quick. _Damn it, irregulars aren't worth_ _shit._ A flash of movement in the buildings caught her eye. "Left track!"

The tank lurched left as she dropped back down and dogged the hatch, while a tracer shot past. The Wolfhound behind her fired with its distinctive _brrrrrt_ as its fire-finder tracked the shot back to its origin. That was technology the 61A3 didn't have, but-"Bringing you on target." Jeannette said, temporarily taking control of the turret. What tech did not do, people still could. "Take 'em." Two sabot rounds and a Zeke tank fireballed into the sky. "Kill! Magella Attack."

"That's almost disappointing." Ritchie said, almost too softly for the mics to pick up. "Only the Zekes would design a one-man tank." Then, louder: "Reloading."

The Wolfhound was tipped onto its side by a nearby set of explosions. "Son of a-" Michael started, the tank lurching into a zigzag as another burst shot past.

Then with a roar audible even through the armor of the tank, a Tin Cod heavy fighter plunged over their heads, firing its cannon. The 25mm guns were no match for mobile suit armor, but the Zaku stepped out from cover to get a better shot at the aircraft. The Tin Cod's pilot had been waiting for that and launched a pair of heavy air-to-ground missiles, blasting the Zaku's upper torso into shreds, before standing the aircraft on its tail and shooting back into the sky. "Raptor Three to Ground, you're welcome."

"If I ever talk shit about the Airedales again," Ritchie said on the intercom. "Hit me."

"Raptor Three, much obliged." A flight of Tin Cods swept overhead, daring the Zekes to fire. One of them stooped like a bird of prey and attacked with missiles, and the explosion of what could only be a tank or mobile suit's ammunition stores followed. The EFAF was going to have its revenge for the way two whole wings of fighters had died on the ramp at Kennedy Spaceport when New York fell.

* * *

"Fucking balls." Ritchie threw a manual against the side of the turret interior. His hatch was open, and the tank was cold, engine off. They had Dopps overhead; the EFAF air had been diverted to the Winnipeg campaign, and they were supposed to have navy air cover, but it hadn't turned up yet.

Driving the Zekes out of Albany had been relatively easy, with the air support. There weren't enough Zakus to cope with the amount of air power being thrown at them, and the Zekes didn't have any other real antiair platforms to protect themselves, even MANPADS. Once the Zakus were gone it was a simple matter for the infantry to advance to contact and then call in the tanks to deal with anything that didn't immediately crumple. The Zeke infantry had shown no particular flair or stubbornness being easy to shift, and their tanks had been more interested in avoiding airstrikes than doing anything else. Pushing them out and down the road to New York had been simple and only a few casualties had resulted.

Jeannette and her company and platoon leaders had planned out their defense carefully, making it as elastic as possible. They were supposed to suck the Zekes in and annoy them, make them deploy as much force as possible. Then the air cover was withdrawn and suddenly they couldn't move unless they wanted to have crap rained on them.

"We can make them clear off, for a little bit." A couple of Talon MANPADS launches would throw the Dopps into confusion, buy them a minute or two to pull back. But there weren't that many covered, protected positions for vehicles, and certainly not enough for them to integrate into a worthwhile defense.

Whatever else might be said about the Zeke pilots, they were used to flying in tight spaces. Primary flight training inside colonies had taught them that. The bastards were willing to fly between the buildings to get at their targets. Jeannette looked up at the highway overpass that was sheltering her tank plus another tank from Knight One and one of the Wolfhounds, listening to the sound of jet engines. "How long can those things fly for anyways?"

There was an itching between her shoulderblades, like she'd turned her back on a loaded gun, the anticipation of the bullet in the back... They'd been still too long. If the Zekes had a relief force moving before they'd gotten to Albany, it was only a few hours to the city by highway. They'd hoped the way the Zekes had shifted easily meant that they felt they were alone, no help coming to save them so they had to save themselves. But it could also mean they saw no point in fighting hard for a position that their incoming reinforcements would easily win back.

The itch between her shoulderblades was just getting worse and Jeannette reflexively looked behind her and raised her binoculars for the second time in the last half-hour. Nothing. _Stick to the plan._ She looked skyward again, hearing a jet engine very close, but abruptly start to fade, as if it was climbing skyward. _Stick to the-screw the plan!_

She turned in her hatch towards one of the Wolfhound's infantrymen. "Red flare, now! Let's move people." Then on the radio. "Knight Actual, displace to Line Beta now."

The 61A3 coughed to life and then lurched into motion, Jeannette grabbing the 12.7. It was more of a security blanket than a real means to keep the Dopps away or kill them, but she'd take what she could get. The tank emerged into the late afternoon sun.

No Dopps swooped down. They were busy; the navy air had finally turned up, Tin Cods and Don tactical bombers. The Dons were downbound, and Jeannette cringed, hoping they could tell their targets from their allies. That was about when the Zaku appeared. "Oh-" Michael began.

"TARGET ZAKU, DIRECT FRONT!" The other tank exploded even as Jeannette futilely engaged the mobile suit with her machine gun, trying for a camera shot that probably wouldn't work anyways. The Zaku tracked its line of fire over her head, towards the Wolfhound-

The two 150mm cannon spoke. A pair of sabot rounds blasted through the cockpit of the Zaku, side by side. It collapsed sideways into a building. Jeannette waited a moment for the ringing in her ears to subside. "Zekes inside the perimeter, make your way to Beta-Two-Four as able. Do not acknowledge!" The Zekes hadn't used Minovsky particles to block radio this time. They would be listening, tracking if they could.

"Harrier here, we have multiple Zakus with infantry support approaching from the east. Count six. At least one more in town."

"Charger Two, scratch one Zaku, scratch one." Distant explosions indicated that at least one Zaku's attempt at an ambush had gone catastrophically wrong, the tables turned by either missiles from Wolfhounds or unguided rockets from infantry.

Everyone was engaged in what had been, over the last few weeks, dubbed the EFGF Standard Disaster Checklist: break contact, regroup on the most defensible position of their fallback line, call for any available air or artillery support, repeat as appropriate. Jeannette jerked her machine gun around seeing movement, but it was just the Command Hound. She waved for it to fall in behind the tank, while the Wolfhound took up the rear. Jeannette dropped into the turret.

"Knight Actual, navy air for you."

"Knight Actual, go for message." Jeannette replied.

"Knight Actual, this is Angel One." They'd sent the best, it seemed. The Angriest Angels were the navy's best tactical bomber squadron. "Sorry for the delay, the marines needed more help getting ashore than predicted. We have six Zakus coming in from the east. Any friendlies down that way?"

"Negative Angel One, they're all yours if you want them." Jeannette replied. If the marines had already landed, though, she was at something of a loss as to what the Zekes thought they were doing. They had bigger problems. In particular, if the navy air had been delayed by flying assault sorties, why where the Zeke fighters still here and why hadn't they withdrawn to fight the landing? They should all be panicking, unless...

Had somebody turned their own trick of Minovsky jamming against them? Because she found that idea worth a chuckle. "Knight Actual, Angel One. We made them flinch, or they finally learned the Times Square party has been crashed. Main enemy force is holding position. Got any other action?"

"Charger Three here, any chance of diverting those navy bombers this way?" Sometimes, things actually did work.

* * *

They were down three tanks and two IFVs, at least for now; one tank destroyed by the ambushing Zaku, the others having pressed a retreating Zaku too hard. It had dropped a highway interchange on them, crushing the IFVs and immobilizing the two tanks with rubble that threw their tracks or prevented them from moving. Now, under cover of navy aircraft, the rest of them advanced cautiously down the road towards New York. The survivors of the attempt to retake Albany had broken away southwest some time ago, and the spaceplane fighters that had been the whole purpose of this fracas were fueling on the tarmac at Kennedy.

"T minus thirty, they say, and then we get to nope right the hell out of here." Jeannette said over the intercom. "Looking forward to less of this wandering around in the dark stuff."

"Tell me about it-" Michael began, then paused. "Barricade coming up on the left, cars between that service station's buildings." A pause as he flicked to infrared. "Cars are cold, but people-sized hot spots."

"Ah, a symbolic barricade." Civilians tended not to grasp the raw power of a sixty-ton armored vehicle, something Jeannette had learned in 0069 when a civvie on Side 6's Libot colony had thought ramming a tank with his tractor-trailer was going to stop the tank. This misapprehension also applied to civilian irregulars. "Let's give 'em a bit of room. Don't want to spook them if they're friendly." As an afterthought, she added a command to Ritchie. "Load Canister."

"Loading."

Jeannette zoomed her optics. They were being incredibly careful about not showing themselves, but must have known the tank could see them. "Mikey, park us at the top of the offramp, front armor at fifteen off. Don't point the guns at them Rich." That would put them about two hundred meters away, up a shallow hill and across a parking lot. "We're overwatching while the column goes by."

They had been in place for thirty seconds when Michael screamed "RPG!" and a line of black smoke with a rocket at one end reached for them. Michael gunned the engine, but the range was too short to get out of the way from a standing start. The turret rang like a bell to the impact of the rocket, but it wasn't gutsy enough to get through. Jeannette swore, and then noticed Ritchie was silent; a glance showed he was out cold, and the monitor for his optics was cracked. Had to have hit his head. "Mikey! Run them over!"

The tank swung right, left track reversed, right track forward, and centered itself on the barricade. Then it churned forward, picking up speed quickly. The sixty-ton armored behemoth wasn't as slow as it looked. Dirt and asphalt sprayed off the tracks as the tank accelerated. Machine gun and rifle fire pinged off the turret and hull, and a second rocket shot out; it missed in the rocketeer's panic. A second later the 61A3 hit the makeshift barricade doing better than sixty kilometers an hour.

It wasn't much of a contest. The tank barely noticed the barricade in fact, crushing or scattering the cars before it as easily as it did the the infantry behind them. Inside the armor, the noise was noticeable, but not loud. No screams audible as ten or fifteen men disappeared beneath the tank's tracks or were mangled by the sudden heave of the cars or flying car parts. "Pull us back slow." Jeannette said, popping her hatch and manning the 12.7 for a few bursts, but the remaining infantry had no stomach for a fight after seeing the tank crush nearly a whole squad under it. They ran fast into a strip mall further away and gave no sign they intended to stop any time soon.

A Wolfhound charged through the space the tank had cleared, it's coaxial gun chattering, and grounded to deploy infantry. Some of them were quick to loot a pair of heavy machine guns the hostiles had left behind, while others rushed to clear the service garage. They emerged a moment later with a man in Zeke uniform; these must have been an isolated infantry unit, maybe a local garrison.

Jeannette waved to them. "You got a medic?"

That brought their medic and sergeant trotting over while Jeannette popped Ritchie's hatch and managed to manhandle him halfway out of the tank. The medic helped with getting him the rest of the way.

"You guys not have seatbelts?" the medic asked.

"Tank catches fire. You have four seconds to get out before your burns are probably bad enough to kill you even if you make it out after. Twenty seconds more to sprint to a safe distance before the ammo stowage blows." Jeannette shrugged. "Even if we had 'em, we wouldn't use 'em much." Then she noticed her driver had gotten out and was throwing up next to the tank. "Let me know if he's concussed or something? I gotta look after my newbie too."

It was quick hop off the tank and one long strides to reach Michael. "You okay, Mikey?"

Her driver took a deep breath and wiped at his mouth, trying to get the taste of vomit to leave. It didn't work, and he turned to face Jeannette. "I'd ask if we could never do that again, but I know you can't promise that. How do you cope?"

Jeannette gave him a sad smile. "I'd like to be able to tell you, but the truth is I just don't have to. They were shooting at me. They died for it. It doesn't bother me. I had to shoot a guy as rookie lance back during the Side Six terrorist fracas, years ago, when he broke into the barracks. That's never bothered to me either." According to the EFF's psychological studies of its troops, a few people never reacted to kill or be killed. Everything else about combat, stress, bad food, poor sleep, but not kill or be killed. A weird emotional quirk, perhaps a leftover adaption of humanity's past as an apex predator; but they were otherwise normal. "Rich is running on hate. His family got gassed and then they dropped his home colony as a weapon. He's a good gunner, because he wants to kill as many Zekes as possible. I wouldn't give him a tank of his own though, because that's the only thing he wants. I joined up, family tradition, but mainly to piss off my dad and then found out I was a five percenter. What'd you sign on for?"

"The right thing. Protect my family and friends from the war that I knew was going to come. Help democracy triumph over military dictatorship." Michael replied. He looked at his shoes. "Doesn't seem quite so noble anymore."

"Hey, Mikey. Look at me." Jeannette commanded. "_Look._" She waited until her driver met her eyes. "There's nothing wrong with you for not being a five percenter or a hate-filled revenge-driven lunatic. I told you you to drive over twenty people with a fucking tank. You did it, God help you, because you trusted I had a good reason. You're out here throwing up now and that makes you the sane one of our merry band. You get that right? You're the one that's still fit for polite society here, the better person."

"Major..." Michael fumbled for words visibly for several seconds. "That's not it. I was thinking about it. You had a reason, like you said, and I kept thinking about it, and sure I didn't know what I was really doing until I'd seen it. But I realized...I wasn't going to break down. I could live with it. That's when I needed to puke." Only on the intercom, where nobody could hear, did they use her non-brevet rank. To her crew it would have been the height of disrespect for anyone else to hear them use a nickname. "Wasn't ready to learn that about myself."

Jeannette chuckled softly. "I..._want_ to be able to relate, you know? You're my rookie, and I want to be able to help, it's my job. I'll tell you what my grandparents told me, before they realized I didn't care. War is cruelty to both sides. You can give or receive, but it still hurts you either way. But in the end you get to go home and be normal again. What you do here is weird and wrong and when you go home one day, you'll not be the person you are here. You won't walk around thinking the best answer is to kill people or something like that. Might find regular cars weird for awhile, but that'll pass. I know it's true, I watched my father do it, my grandparents did it, hell, it's a family tradition. And they weren't crazy like me."

Michael shook his head. "Your father was a shit, you said?" There was a trace of humor in his tone, just a trace, but it was enough to reassure Jeannette. If you could laugh, you weren't beyond hope yet.

Jeanette grinned at her driver. "That _was_ his normal. He was a shit when he was born. He retired at thirty-two, senior non-commissioned, wanted another boy. He got me. Never got over it. Wanted me to not join the army. That's what Montange kids _do_." She waved back towards the tank. "Come on. I'm still waiting for the letter he'll send because he's pissed I made officer."

Michael noticed that she took the same care to avoid the gore he did. "You said it didn't bother-"

"They're dead. We killed them. No, that doesn't bother me. But that doesn't mean I particularly like the sight, smell, or feel of a human body turned into paste. I'm only _kind of_ fucked up, kiddo, not completely insane." Jeannette replied. She glanced at her gunner, who was awake now while the medic checked his pupil responsiveness with a flashlight. "He going to live?"

"No concussion, skull's intact," the medic replied. "If you don't need me for anything else?"

"Just to say thanks. So thanks." Jeannette looked at Ritchie, crawling to the bustle of the tank along the top of the turret as she did so. "You seeing double?"

"No ma'am. Good to go. Sorry about that." He had a still-bleeding cut on his forehead, but not very much of one. The infantry medic made his way back to the Wolfhound.

Jeannette started fishing in the spare parts they carried. "Good. You get to attach the replacement monitor then."


	6. The Burning Of New York

Garma is not your average Zabi. He seems a decent human being. His family has messed him up with a search for both approval and somebody he could be a normal human being at/with. But he's still a Zabi. Certain things are learned in that house regardless of who you are. Do note he understands them differently, and wrongly...

Also, there are _Clanners_ in my UC fic. What's next? A Mad Cat?!

**The Burning Of New York**

"Major, you need to see this."

Her first, irrational post-sleep thought was wondering if Gihren Zabi's lilac hair, apparently that was the height of fashion in Zeon, actually smelled like lilacs. Any such frivolity was driven quickly from her mind as she actually listened. "How long did you let me sleep after this went out?"

"Minutes?" Cat Williams replied. "We were all a bit stunned he's reacting this soon."

"Son of a bitch." They were back in Albany, crashing for the night before retreating further north, their job done. Jeannette stood, they'd "borrowed" a warehouse full of mattresses and racked out, and with no privacy or heating there was no undressing either. "He didn't say 'retaliation' there, directly anyways, but the way he talked about securing it and the local resistance-"

"Yeah," Cat agreed.

"I'm guessing our orders aren't changed yet either. Fuck. Wake everyone up, get everyone's gear in order." Jeannette started trotting in the direction of the parked Command Hound. The radio op on duty looked up when she poked her head in the back hatch, and held out a headset to her. Jeannette shook her head. "Let me know if anything new comes in." Then she turned and trotted back into the building towards a clump of officers and NCOs that was forming.

"Major, anything new?" That was her infantry captain.

"Nothing yet Ted," she replied. "How's your people?"

"Probably pissed at getting woke up over lavender hair man's power hour." He shook his head. "I'll start pulling our rocket count. We're going to need them. Darius, Top, come on."

* * *

California Base, the closest thing to Zeon's capital on Earth at the moment, was hosting a similar yet also very different meeting. "Do we know the units involved?" Garma Zabi asked his immediate advisors.

"First and Second Regiments, Capital Division, under the division's second in command." Captain Visby, a naval officer and Garma's chief of staff. He was apolitical unlike most of the staff, from Zeon's small but growing wet navy.

There was Colonel Katherine Steiner, a blue-eyed, ice-cold woman who handled intelligence. She was late of the personal staff of Garma's sister, Kycilia Zabi, and Steiner's loyalty to the young prince over anyone else as yet unestablished. General August Mecklin, an old warhorse who acted as operations officer, loyal to both Garma and Dozle Zabi and hoping he would not have to choose. Logistics and training, Colonel Sandra Noruff, whose true loyalty was to Gihren Zabi and not Garma. And finally two advisors without portfolio, Commander Cima Garahau, loyal to the mission above any particular person, and Captain Adrian Vist, whose loyalties were still for sale. Cima and Adrian were Garma's praetorians and troubleshooters, and he valued their combat soldier's pragmatism and feel for how the line troops would view matters as a counterbalance to his staff officers' more sanitized view of the world. There were a dozen more officers and a variety of civilian and police liasions, everything necessary to fight a war for a planet, on Garma's staff.

But it was these six people that Garma placed his greatest trust in, either because he regarded them as genuinely trustworthy or because he just had to because of their jobs. Garma could be naive of his family's political struggles at times, and especially of what they were really about. But he had a lifetime of experience with his brother Ghiren's trustworthy nature or lack thereof.

"What," Garma addressed the group, "are our options for response?"

"Realistically...none." Noruff observed.

"Unacceptable." Mecklin said. "This will not make our lives easier. Seattle inspired several units in America and Asia to fight to the death. Our losses at Shanghai and Richmond were more than five times our projections. Our troops can't move through the Pacific Northwest without being showered in man-portable rockets and hunting rifle rounds. Another major city destroyed and any chance we could govern the planet will evaporate." He grimaced. "The push into Europe is already stretched thinner than I would like and making less progress than we hoped. Ditto Australia. If we give the Federation any reason to fight us harder we'll lose the initiative."

"We also have to consider how the Federation will respond otherwise." Steiner said. "If it appears we intend to exterminate Earth slowly, one city at a time...if we seem engaged in a war of extermination, it may provoke them to retaliate with strategic weapons regardless of the Antarctic Treaty." There was a long moment of silence. For five minutes, as the Federation had opened with nuclear-tipped missile salvos at Loum, the Zeon military had feared that all had been lost and the Federation was going to deploy their strategic rocket forces at Luna II and Earth on a ballistic saturation bombardment against Side 3. Then Solomon, Pezun, and A Bao A Qu would respond in kind, and the human race would pass screaming into oblivion.

"Perhaps it will have the opposite effect," Noruff argued. "It could cow them." It took her several seconds to make that argument though, after the conjuring of the nuclear specter. Even to these men and women, who fought for planets and waged war on scales unimaginable, a full-scale nuclear exchange was a terrifying and nihilistic prospect. It was the antithesis, the negation, of their skills and dedication to their craft of conventional war. They didn't see it as an 'escalation' the way an uneducated civilian might discuss the matter. A strategic nuclear exchange meant their entire profession had failed.

Cima spoke quietly. "When we killed billions, gassed the colonies, were the Earth Federation Space Forces cowed?" For a moment she recalled her own reaction, after that mission had been over. She and the three other pilots tapped for gas delivery had been in a room with the rest of their unit. And everyone, even those not involved in the colony gassings, had been sitting there, with their sidearm out like they meant to clean it. Just staring at the gun, thinking very seriously about whether this was what they had signed up for and whether they could reconcile duty, honor, humanity, and souls. After a moment she answered her own questions. "No. They fought like madmen. Federation fighters rammed our mobile suits even when undamaged, sacrificing themselves by the dozen to ensure a couple of Zakus died. Federation warships would self-destruct when our Zakus got in close, to at least take a few enemies with them. They took seventy percent losses, and they never broke. Not a single one of them _ever_ tried to run. Even at the end, with their fighter screens destroyed and their ordnance expended, they maintained their formations and retreated in good order rather than letting us cut them up as they routed. And we were hurt too badly to finish them off." She spitted Noruff with a glare. "Too many people already see the fight to destroy us as a crusade. We can't encourage that further."

Garma leaned forward. "I agree. We cannot allow this to proceed unhindered purely because of how it will affect our operations, but we cannot directly interfere. Therefore, we evacuate the city. My brother can have his object lesson. I will not help him with it, and I intend to make it known."

"Go...public?" Steiner said. "Is that wise?"

"My job is to conquer Earth to the best of my ability. I will send a message to the Sovereign explaining my decision." Garma smiled. "If he disapproves, I expect I will be recalled. Commander, please remain. The rest of you...we will have much work to do. Set it up."

The others left the room. Garma gestured to Cima to follow him, and they stepped into a sideroom, windless. "I had this room swept for listening devices while the meeting was ongoing." Garma said softly. "I know you are not one of Gihren's faithful, so I have a task for you. It is in the strictest confidence." He paused. "If Gihren finds out, I may not be able to protect you, Commander."

Cima looked at him for a long moment. "Understood, sir." It didn't seem to require anything else. Yet.

"I cannot directly act to rebuke my brother. The Federation can."

This conversation couldn't be real, Cima thought. She was hallucinating. That was probably why she was so calm about it. "Sir, you can't possibly be suggesting what I think you are suggesting."

"Earth is _my_ responsibility. Yet my family sees fit to interfere at every turn. There are units like M'Quve's or Sahalin's outside my jurisdiction in critical operational areas. We knew South-East Asia would be important in the planning stage. We knew it would resist. And in violation of basic principles of armed combat, it was given to a commander out of my control. Australia and Indonesia are bleeding us dry because I cannot give orders to Sahalin. I don't dare send my naval forces south of Java yet because I can't stage heavy air assets from nearby due to a lack of secure bases. My supply lines to Australia are so thin they are translucent. Whose fault is that?" Garma's question was rhetorical. "Sahalin should never have been given a combat command. He simply doesn't have the interest. Instead lives and equipment are spent every day teaching a lesson about unity of command that people of such rarefied rank should already know."

Cima swallowed. "Sir...this conversation is heading in a direction I'm not comfortable with."

Garma chuckled. There was an edge of desperation to it. "You think I am? Gihren's plans to cow the Federation make them fight so much harder, and he kills billions or millions of people. I've known from childhood he's devoid of any kind of human feelings. My brother is a monster, and I move against him not from choice but of necessity. He would destroy everything I hold dear, from the nation of Zeon to this planet, in all its wonder and beauty." Garma smiled, or tried to, but it came out a rictus grin under the stress of the moment. "My family would accuse me of ideological apostasy and worse to hear this. But Earth is humanity's home...and no matter how perfect the recreation, no matter how hard we believe in Deikun, we will never be entirely whole anywhere else. Gihren would destroy it and all humanity if he is allowed to act with a free hand for long enough; he already killed half of humanity. My sister and my father struggle constantly to hold him in check. It is time I join the fight. Will you help me?"

Cima stood there, silent; struck dumb. A thousand thoughts swirled through her head. But one in particular seemed more important. _I'm going to get the bastard who told me that the G3 warheads were loaded with sedative._ Not Gihren directly, but it was improbable that Gihren had no responsibility at all even if Garma was as good at lying as he claimed his brother to be.

"What are your orders, sir?"

* * *

"New orders." Jeannette sat down with her two captains and her senior NCOs. "The Zekes are staging major forces into the city." Even here in Albany, "the city" couldn't mean anything but New York City. "Massive airlift and rail-lift. They moved fast; some of the marines who were staying behind to help out the local resistance with training didn't make it out before the Zekes cut off sea access." She checked her watch. "They ought to get here soon, in fact, they're with us for now. Play nice with the leathernecks. For now, we watch from a distance, put out feelers. Resistance has confirmed at least two foot infantry regiments were flown into Newark. We have no idea where they actually came from, and there's a hope that we might be getting them to pull their operational reserves from the Winnipeg push. So we sit here and look distracting. Ted, Jorge, your guys should set up extra fighting positions. I know it's a pain, but the local company construction companies will help out and we're getting a platoon of engineers and a bunch of materials airlifted in tonight, along with a platoon of SkyWatcher triple A tracks." Built on the same hull as the 61-series MBT, the SkyWatcher was a combination gun-missile AA system built around the ubiquitous Talon MANPADS and a pair of the equally ubiquitous single-barrel 60mm guns. They were just as heavy as the tanks they were based on, though far more lightly armored; the weight went into their fast-moving turret.

A runner poked his head in one of the vehicle's side hatches. "We got a resistance courier here, ma'am, from the city. Looks pretty urgent."

Jeannette raised an eyebrow. "Send 'em in."

The courier was a young woman, Jeannette's age or younger, with a shock of bright pink hair and numerous piercings. Jeannette figured she got away with couriering for the resistance because nobody so obviously trying to attract attention could be doing something nefarious. "Major Montange?"

"That's me." Jeannette agreed. The girl looked tired. Jeannette glanced to the runner. "Get some water for her, Johnson." She noticed the way the runner's eyes widened to be addressed by name, and restrained a shake of the head. Johnson was older than she was, but...well, the medal ribbons counted for something even if she wasn't wearing them.

"I don't know if we have time," the courier said. "The Zekes have declared an evacuation. Forces of theirs from space are coming to destroy the city, and the ones on the ground are trying to get everyone out before it happens."

Everyone in the command vehicle sat bolt upright. Darius Johnson, the infantry company's First Sergeant, hit his head on the vehicle's overhead. Jeannette leaned in. "Why do we believe it?"

"They offered blanket immunity to the resistance as long as nobody shoots. Take your guns and gear with you openly, and go wherever you want from here, just _leave_. One of the Zabi kids came to the city in person and wanted to talk to the resistance leaders for their help. At least a few took him up on it and he played fair, so now...everyone thinks he's serious."

"One of the Zabi kids. Male." Jeannette looked at Cat. "Dozle's still in space, Gihren's not a combat commander...Garma? Do we know anything about him?"

Cat shook his head. "Not off the top of my head." The other two also shook their heads.

Jeannette made a frustrated hiss. "Anything else?"

"There's a rumor out he wants to send a representative to speak to you, at a time and place of your choosing. I don't know if it's true, but that was the word on the street when I left."

* * *

"This is going to be weird." Jeannette observed to no one in particular. She keyed her radio. "Knight Two, report."

"In position, One-One." That was the last unit in position. The marines were elsewhere, near the local airport, where resistance groups from New York were gathering, and there was a stream of Gunperries, even the occasional Medusa, flying in weapons to arm the resistance. Some vehicles too, enough to replace losses at least, but there wasn't much to spare currently. Something big was supposedly about to go down in Europe.

Then they flew out, carrying the families of the resistance fighters to Montreal, where other Medusas flew them to Iceland or the UK. A process that was greatly assisted by the fact the Zeke battalion driving on Montreal had opted to stop short of the city limits and withdraw twenty kilometers, leaving the battered 501st and 502nd Mechanized Battalions of the Territorial Army alone. The Zekes had been supplied through New York, so they could have been reacting to their broken supply line, or running short of bullets or food or gas. Nothing direct. Nothing overt. But damn convenient for the New York evac.

The Zekes had established contact, via the Resistance, and she'd specified a time and place. They were sending a pair of Zakus, and while they were armed...they would be walking into a prepared kill zone. At her command they'd be easily converted into dead Zakus. Which meant... "Rich. Talk to me."

"What do you want said, Cap? They're Zekes."

"I want you to say they're Zekes but if we can save a hundred thousand families you won't touch that damn trigger. Promise me, Rich." Jeannette replied; flat, all intensity, but no emotion. "I want you to say you're not going to make ten thousand kids just like you."

"...Cap, that's a low blow." Micheal said softly.

"We ain't boxing. Those kids are really on the line here." Jeanette replied. "Rich, tell me or I'm having Ted lock you in the back of one of his Wolfhounds."

"Jeannette, I would rather load Canister and fire it into my crotch when you put it like that. You have my word I won't fire without a command." Ritchie replied a moment later. A pause. "And you know you can't lock a Wolfhound from the outside."

"Yeah." She smiled humorlessly at her gunner through the hatch. "Poke your head out. You too, Mikey. They'll probably feel safer if they can see each of us." The 61A3 was parked in a service garage, in a little town south of Albany called Ravena; the other units of the ad-hoc battalion were arranged there or in the immediately neighboring town of Coeymans.

"Cap, I'm not freezing my nose for some Zeke." Ritchie complained.

"No, you're not. You're freezing your nose for me." Jeannette shot back, amused. The driver's hatch opened with a clank and a scrape, and Ritchie followed suit a moment later, with some unintelligible grumbling. "Twenty minutes. They'll be here soon unless they're running."

As if on cue, there was a crackle over the radio. "Harrier Two. We have a pair of Zakus advancing up the Eighty-Seven."

Jeannette nodded to herself. "Take us forward, Mikey."

Once they were parked, Jeannette got out of the tank, standing on the turret. Ritchie gave her a look. "You sure that's a good idea, Cap?"

"If those two mean to kill us, then they'll be able to do it whether I'm in the tank or not. The armor ain't going to save me from a Zaku burst." She chuckled. "I'd be safer out here, if it were an engine compartment penetration."

It wasn't a long wait. The Zakus took only seven minutes to arrive; they were early. They stopped in the parking lot they'd been told to stop in, and one knelt down, disgorging a pilot from its cockpit. Jeannette looked down at Ritchie. "If they kill me, I want that pilot to have two seconds to gloat. No longer."

"Loading Canister." Ritchie agreed.

Jeannette dismounted from the tank and started walking. Her counterpart started walking as well. A woman. Long, black, lustrous hair. Jeannette felt a flash of irrational jealousy. _I guess that confirms it, no moving parts inside a Zaku cockpit. _She'd never actually seen an intact cockpit for one, only those destroyed by shellfire or scuttling charges.

The woman was tall, too. Hundred and eighty centimeters, little less than that maybe. Taller than Jeannette's hundred-sixty-seven. Rank tabs...a marine? That or navy, she was a commander. Curious. The Earth Attack Force was supposed to use army ranks, the Space Attack Force navy ranks...

"A major? I suppose the actual commander would delegate..." Jeannette had thought about it for a bit, delegating this meeting, but if she sent a captain or a lieutenant it'd be unbelieveable; an insult even. A battalion would delegate the battalion XO, a major, a larger unit would probably also delegate a major or a lieutenant colonel.

Zeke accent, though. That weird mix of a high-class German accent, Bavarian and not Prussian, and a bit of the Virginias and Kentucky that betrayed they weren't real Germans any more than Jeannette was real French. Side 3 had been founded by people from the first-wave German diaspora in the Americas, the people who'd settled the Shenandoah Valley and the Blue Ridge Mountains. People whose knowledge of the "mother country" they liked to ape was entirely theoretical.

Jeannette had reluctantly come to the conclusion that to maintain her unit's ruse of being powerful enough to threaten New York, she'd have to go to the meeting herself. "As would yours," she replied evenly. "What can we do for you?"

The other woman had a dead serious expression. She was carrying a laptop, one of the hardened military models, made out like small briefcases with handles and high-impact plastic. It was EFGF issue, in fact. Not really surprising, the Zekes had to have captured a fair bit of Federation gear with California Base and other installations overrun. "Nothing. I have been directed by Captain Garma Zabi to deliver this." She held out the laptop.

Jeannette put her hand on the handle but didn't close it. "And what is it?"

"The full operations order, from the hands of Gihren Zabi himself, for the destruction of New York City." She raised her eyebrows. "How you use it is up to you." She let it go, forcing Jeannette to grab it, and started moving away.

It was probably silly to open the thing up and turn it on right here, but Jeannette judged it slightly less silly than not checking at all the thing wasn't entirely full of explosives inside the heavy industrial-strength plastic casing. The laptop did turn on, so she was marginally reassured on that front as she closed it up and turned to go back to the tank.

Halfway there she heard the Zakus move again, and turned to watch. The Zeke suits, even at a range of nearly three hundred meters, were still huge. The menace of an armored vehicle was often lost on those who had never seen them in action. A mobile suit...no, it lost nothing in the eyes of the uninitiated.

Of course, seeing them break into a run as they left the area took a lot of that away for these two. The left side of Jeannette's face curled into a partial grin. "Yeah," she whispered to herself. "You better run." Then she turned and continued her walk back towards the tank.

"You sure that's thing safe?" Ritchie yelled to her. "They got out fast."

Jeannette laughed and yelled back. "They could feel the gun barrels pointed at them. It's too small for a nuke Rich, and anything else wouldn't be worth running from that hard."

Micheal chuckled, and addressed her at a normal conversational level when she was closer. "That Zeke was worried somebody would bust her. Didn't want to be here."

"You paid that much attention? Should I be worried that you're staring at Zeke women, PFC?" Ritchie asked with mock asperity.

"Nah, he has an eye for talent. She'd have been attractive if she got the iron rod out of her ass." Jeannette observed tiredly. "Okay. This is going to be weird. Weirder. Whatever. Let's go read Gihren Zabi's op orders."

* * *

"We're looking at a short division-sized force, two mobile suit and two infantry regiments. Mostly foot infantry, little mechanization, but over two hundred Zakus." The fact that they were coming here, to a city the Zekes already controlled, was a gift to the embattled EFGF: two hundred Zakus could have ruptured any of the battlefronts on the planet. A bloody and unwelcome gift, but still a gift.

Jeannette looked around. They were in a high-school auditorium. Her own unit was here, down to lieutenants and company first sergeants. The rest of the hundred-plus seats were taken up by resistance people. A lot of them had volunteered to fight, so that the force here nominally numbered around ten thousand. Training and heavy weapons for anti-suit work were nonexistent, mostly. Jeannette wasn't sure she would have counted them as a regiment's worth of regular infantry in combat power. She had teams from her own infantry running some of the resistance through rocket drills, but they wouldn't be many, and stuff like squad weapons and crew-served weapons just wasn't there. Ten thousand rifles sounded like a lot, but it really wasn't impressive compared to what ten thousand regular infantry would have.

"We can't stop it. We probably can't even slow it down. We've confirmed DZs at Kennedy Spaceport, Newark International, even in Central, Van Cortlandt, and Pelham Bay Parks. The Newark one is our primary focus. Once most of their forces there have moved into Manhattan proper, their command group will be largely alone there." She paused. "Garma Zabi has made it clear that if anyone goes on to the island and comes off again rather than straight back to space, he intends to have them shot. You've all heard the broadcasts. The Zekes that are coming intend to collapse the tunnels. First Marine Battalion and other Zeke units of the Earth Attack Force will seal the bridges."

She tried to make eye contact with everyone at once. "They also won't move to help the Newark Zekes, and won't let the Manhattan ones off the island. The Newark group outnumbers us in heavies, but we know how they will deploy and-" she gestured towards the back and the resistance, "we can put people in place beforehand. We can at least badly hurt their command group." She gestured to the large map projected behind her, using a stolen laser pointer. "The Zekes will deploy like this..."

* * *

Michael was waiting for her just offstage. "You'll be a colonel before the war's over."

"Assuming we all survive this, maybe." Jeannette took a deep breath. "You ain't here to tell me that, Mikey. Out with it."

"You know this isn't going to help." Michael said softly. "We could just back off. It goes against the grain...but like you said, we won't stop it. What's this all for?"

"We will most likely achieve absolutely nothing of value. Just like the Zekes." Jeannette looked at her driver steadily. "Why's simple: look them in their eyes, and tell me if I could stop our people, even the regular military ones. They need to do something. I'm giving them something that might, maybe, just a little, have some value. Not many Zeke colonels have bought the farm, so maybe that will mean something. Maybe we'll get some geniuses. At the least we know they'll definitely be a bunch of sick bastards. And we're killing Zakus. That counts for something. One Zaku costs as much as four tanks or so the rumor mill says. We're trading up, right?" Jeannette's smile was utterly without humor or happiness.

"Cap, you ever considered talking to a shrink? Or a priest? There's got to be one somewhere around this town." Michael was aware he was probably overstepping his bounds, but his commander's fatalism disturbed him.

"I've spent years with shrinks. It's a hell of thing to wake up one morning and realize that killing doesn't bother you. You spend a long time trying to make sense of who and what you are. I did it so much, I was working my way through a psych degree, military education, before the saber rattles started." Jeannette shook her head. "Nothing they can tell me in the time we have that I couldn't tell myself. You can believe you're invincible, but that fades. Or you can accept that the universe isn't under your control." She gestured to the door. "Come on."

As they stepped into the cold air, she paused a moment. "You know, my grandfather, he was at Lake Victoria, back in Thirty-Two. Everyone thought that the Anti-Union Front had run out of armored vehicles ten years before, and then they come up with a whole company. He had the option to withdraw his company of mech infantry and let them take the town, then vanish again, or to stand and probably lose people, but give the Air Force a chance to get their asses in gear and break them. He chose to stand. The Airedales did their jobs. He lost twenty-seven people. He never forgave himself for that decision. But he told me he'd do it again. There are times where my life and yours don't count."

He actually chuckled. It was almost beyond her ability to comprehend. "My grandfather was there too. He was one of the civilians that helped them dig revetments for the vehicles. He said the captain gave them a hell of speech, but he could never remember the exact words."

And suddenly, inexplicably, Jeanette felt better.

* * *

They were landing in daylight, but wouldn't move on the city until dark. Two hundred Zakus and over two thousand infantry took time to organize. Spotters down near the water had watched a frantic boatlift taking place for hours; Zeke airlifters had been moving out of Central Park until forty minutes ago. There were still Earth Attack Force infantry on the bridges and the area leading to them, a couple dozen Zakus moving around at the waterfront; maintaining some kind of order among the fleeing, preventing a total clog-up.

If what the spotters were saying was true, Garma Zabi had deployed nearly a hundred Zakus of his own to stand guard over the fleeing refugees. Maybe more; the resistance had deployed its eyes in such a way as to support the coming fight more fully over securing their flanks. Jeannette wasn't entirely happy with their deployments, honestly, but her control over them was limited. The only thing she could do to control them was threaten to leave them twisting in the wind. She wasn't actually going to leave them to hang. Her people needed to do something and she wasn't _that_ different from them.

"Contrails," the radio op in the Command Hound reported.

Jeannette took a deep breath. This was where it got uncomfortable. "Plan as intended." A few spotter teams would keep reporting, switching to the local phone landlines or other not-over-the-air comms. That would be passed to unit commanders in a similar way. Most of them, military and resistance both, would get as lurky as they could, hiding out in warehouse type stores or industrial buildings for vehicles and basements for infantry. _Assuming this all works. _The Command Hound had actually been designed to mooch civilian phone service from several sources at once. The other vehicles they'd had to kitbash answers or steal civilian wireless for the last hop. As long as they didn't transmit things ought to work.

Assuming the Zekes didn't Minovsky everything out of habit. There was no _reason_ to do so, but... Jeannette shook her head. They'd demo that bridge when they came to it. She listened to the reports about the HLVs on final approach and tried to visualize it all while in the back of her mind wishing for some music.

"The space between we all get medals and we all get fucked up the ass is uncomfortably small here." Ritchie observed from the gunner's seat. He was fiddling with a personal music player too, as if just to a annoy her, though he couldn't plug it in.

That got a humorless laugh from his tank commander. "You've been in the army for less than four months, Rich, who the hell taught you to swear right?"

"It's issued to you when you make Lance Corporal if you don't already know." Ritchie deadpanned. "Though I expect Michael's issue to be defective, gosh darn it to heck."

"Somebody's got to be presentable." Michael was philosophical. "Sound good with the news soundbytes and the recruiting spots."

"Aspirations to higher command at PFC?" Jeannette shook her head. "Gonna have to watch you close, Mikey."

Minutes dragged into hours. Their information seemed to be good. The Earth Attack Force troops were desperately trying to get people out of Manhattan. They'd forcibly cleared the bridges and were having people cross on foot, but it was slowing down now. The New York Evacuation would go down as one of the great logistics achievements of the war, doubtless, but it would fall short of perfect.

_Damnation and hellfire. _She was even swearing like her grandfather. None of the itching between the shoulder blades, the sensation of about to being shot, but more of a generalized frustration with inaction.

"This is Private Eye One-Niner. Buildings are falling in downtown."

Ritchie took a deep, shuddering breath in front of her. She closed her eyes a moment, and looked at her watch. Eighteen hundred. Zekes were punctual at least.

She flipped her radio to transmit. "Knight Actual. Execute."

In the driver's compartment, Michael pushed the button for the engine, and it came to life. The next command he expected wasn't long in coming. "Mikey. Advance."

An explosion climbed into the night sky as they exited the building, two 61A3s and two Wolfhounds behind them. Navy air. Jeanette had begged, pleaded for the navy's support, but she hadn't been able to get a firm promise of it. They'd come through anyways.

* * *

Newark International was not having a good day. It was about to get worse.

"Target Magella, direct front!" The Zeke tanks had been a surprise, but they'd hit them before they could recover from the navy bombing.

"On the way!" The situation was honestly something of a mess. Their tactical spacing was shot to hell by the massive amount of wreckage on the tarmac after the HLVs blew up and the pools of burning jet fuel from where one of the Navy planes had blasted the underground fuel storage by accident. Jeanette had six tanks, spaced barely ten meters apart if they were lucky.

"Hit! Kill!" She did have to admit, it gave them a hell of a shock effect though. Six tanks this close together looked like the fist of an angry god.

"Reloading!" Knight Two-Two leapfrogged forward, its turret swinging right towards one of the hangers ahead of them; just beyond it Knight Two-One moved a little forward of that and fired at the control tower at the same time a Zeke missile team atop the tower did. The two shots passed in-flight; the HE round from Two-Two's left barrel arrived first, detonating against the radar atop the tower and sending fragments slicing through the Zeke missileers. The Zeke ATGM wobbled in flight and crashed into the tarmac three meters to the right of the tank after the death of its operator.

"Advance! Rich, target Magella, nine o'clock!" The 61A3 rumbled forward, leapfrogging to the front, and loosed a single HEAT round at a Magella Attack that crashed into the Zeke tank just aft the machinegun battery. The Top portion of the tank started to lift off from the wreck of the rest of it and was swatted from the sky by a line of tracers from a following SkyWatcher AA vehicle.

"Target Zaku, one o'clock!" The turret swung right, as Two-One and Two-Two engaged the same target. The Zaku was trying to free itself from a piece of HLV wreckage, and looked up just in time to see death coming before four HEAT rounds crashed into it, blasting its head and shoulders to a wreck. "Hit! Target destroyed. Load HE! Target HLV, eleven o'clock!" The HLV was listing, but seemed to be substantially intact.

"Loading!" The tank stopped, and the autoloaders went _whirr-CLUNK_ as they brought a new pair of rounds to the breeches, then the _shiss-SLAM_ as the rounds were rammed and the breaches closed with compressed air. "Up! On the way!"

"Reload with HEAT. Hit! Hit! Good shooting, Rich." At least they had a surfeit of HEAT rounds, Command's apology for being unable to send them more reinforcements.

Jeannette listened to the radio a moment. "Knight One-Three, One-One. Hit the terminal, Gate Six. Our resistance friends need it blasted."

"Copy One-One, engaging." The terminal took a hit, one Sabot, one HE; what One-Three must have had loaded.

A Zaku waded through the flames and fired, but missed. "Target Zaku, three o'clock!" _Now things get difficult._

"On the way!" The Zaku took a couple of other hits, one in the left shoulder, one in the right leg, before their shell struck it over the cockpit. It froze, flames licking from the hole over the cockpit.

"Hit! Kill." Jeannette zoomed her optics out again, listening to the other half of her tanks reporting contact only with infantry and an occasional light vehicle in their wide sweep around to hit the terminal from the other end away from the resistence. "Knight Company, spread out a bit, make room for Charger." They opened their spacing, fifty meters between tanks where they could manage it, and Charger's Wolfhounds moved up close behind them. "Advance, thirty klicks." Thirty kilometers per hour.

Jeannette flicked to infrared and grimaced. It was nearly unusable, with all the fires. Still-"Target Zaku, one o'clock, one klick!" Flipping to radio. "Six Zakus, one o'clock. Charger, get in among them!"

"Major-"

"Do it! Don't get close enough to get kicked." The hover vehicles shot forward, over a river of burning jet fuel, and were among the six Zakus that had elected to make a stand in seconds; their high top speeds let them do that. The Zaku pilots had been counting on the river of fire to shield them from the tanks, visually and physically, while they got organized. The Zaku formation abruptly dissolved into chaos as laser-guided missiles crashed into their suit's legs, gimping them, or they were forced into weird hopskotch maneuvers to avoid that fate.

"Charger, out of the way!" All six of her tanks had targets now. The hover vehicles dodged clear. One Zaku managed to kick one of the annoying IFVs, but just barely; its side crunched in, but it kept moving. Then twelve 150mm guns spoke.

They'd accidentally double-targeted one of the Zakus, so only five of them died to the volley. The last one had a knee joint damaged by a missile hit, and fell over as well. They thought they'd killed it, until it raised its gun. "Rich! The left-most-"

Four 120mm shells crossed in flight with six 150mm shells. Knight One-Four's blowout panels on the back of the turret vented an ammo explosion as the driver leaped out of the tank and tried to set a record for the fifty-meter sprint. Flames emerged from the commander's hatch at the same time as the commander. The unfortunate man rolled on the ground still burning for a few moments, before Knight One-Three's gunner couldn't stand it anymore and ended their agony with a brief burst from One-Three's coaxial machine gun.

Ritchie was incensed. "That son of a-"

"He would never have made it. His lungs and throat were probably scorched, third degree burns over most of his body, shock, shrapnel trauma from the penetration. The fact he survived as long as he did was a cruel miracle. Lucas would have died in a minute or less anyways. Even if he didn't, the rest of his life would have been spent crippled and in total agony." Jeannette said softly. "That was mercy, Rich." She flipped to the radio. "Gerard. Ain't saying it was wrong, but don't let me catch your gunner doing that again."

"Understood, ma'am," replied Knight One-Three's commander.

"Charger, casualties?" Jeannette said next.

"Four-Four has a bent vehicle, but it still runs." Okay, that was better than she'd hoped for that little stunt.

"Knight Three, report."

"Resistance says several Zakus ran into the buildings to escape air attack, escorting a half-dozen command tracks. They're trying to find them. Terminal is almost ours." A long pause. "Resistance confirms, two of the targets are KIA." The targets were the four colonels or captains or whatever ranks they used; reading the op order had given Jeannette a headache considering naval ranks for land units.

The Zekes had really intended to build a military completely unlike any other. They couldn't, of course. Militaries looked alike because they had similar goals and only so many ways to achieve them. Her mind wandering on that, Jeannette panned the optics over towards Manhattan.

And froze. The skyscrapers were on fire. Some of them were falling. She could actually see Zakus; tiny, almost antlike at this distance, but still see them. Her brain fought for perspective and achieved it. Then she rejected that perspective in horror as she recognized the Vist Foundation Tower, built in UC 0060, nearly a kilometer tall...was falling. "Oh sweet Christ," Jeannette breathed, too softly for her mic to activate. It took her several seconds to tear her eyes away from the scene. _You can't think about it now. Maybe ever._

"Okay. Let's pull it towards the terminal Knight and Charger, make sure it's secured, cover the infantry." The Zekes were still resisting when the tanks got there, and it took several minutes of tank-infantry cooperation to get the situation sorted out to her satisfaction.

* * *

_If I had just a thousand regular infantry with fucking radios-_ Jeannette cut her thoughts off with a sharp shake of the head. _We'll find them_. A rookie would think it would be hard to hide something the size of a mobile suit, but as always a big enough building or hill could hide anything. She reached into the small bag hanging off the turret wall next to her and fumbled for a moment, grabbing a couple of pills that she swallowed.

"You okay boss?" Ritchie asked.

"Pressure on my temples, like." She shook her head. "Took some AC." The pills called ACs combined aspirin and caffeine as an all-purpose treatment for relatively minor complaints and injuries, handling both pain and the urge to slow down. "Hell of a time for a headache."

"Blaming the Resistance for it seems fair." Ritchie replied.

From the driver's compartment Michael chimed in. "We were thirty-day wonders, not like we have that much room to talk."'

"Thirty day wonders or not, you're the best goddamn crew I've ever had. Don't you forget it." Jeannette replied. She listened to the radio a moment, the turned it on. "Knight Company, prepare to move out. Map coordinates to follow." She called up a map and started marking out platoon positions, humming softly to herself.

"What's that, anyways?" Ritchie asked a moment later.

"The Garryowen." Jeannette replied with a chuckle. "Cavalry tune. We'll get you a sense of proper history, thirty-day wonders or not." She clicked the radio on again. "Knight Company, move out to designated positions, avoid contact . Charger Actual, handle the cleanup here and move out in support when you're done." Back to the intercom. "Mikey, you got the position? Follow the route I designated."

"Found the Zekes?" Ritchie asked.

"Yeah. They're in the trainyards, probably hoping somebody's going to come rescue them." Jeanette fished her binoculars out and opened her hatch. The trainyard wasn't far away.

* * *

"Cap, are you nuts?" Michael said. "You can't go look on foot." Trains, stacked containers, and buildings provided plenty of concealment here, but they had no good way of reconning the Zeke position. The resistance cell that had been radioing in had been in a building with an overlooking position, but the Zeke command vehicles must have triangulated their transmissions because a Zaku had annihilated the top three floors. Jeannette had no idea if anyone had survived.

"It's the only way. Just poke my head over the containers there, just my head. Either that or we go in blind. We only accounted for maybe a dozen Zakus so far, they had thirty-six. We go into two to one against, we all die. I gotta do it Mikey. Wait here." Then she was gone into the dark.

"Do you feel good about this?" Michael asked Ritchie. They were both out of their hatches.

"Not particularly. But I've learned to accept she knows what she's doing." Ritchie chuckled. "She yelled at me enough for not doing so, kinda a trial by fire thing." He sniffed the air and looked towards New York, across the Hudson. "I wonder if this place is going to smell like this forever." Even at this distance, the sound of a falling skyscraper was easily heard. "Be fucking fitting, I'll tell you that. There needs to be at least one permanent mark left in all this shit the Zekes have done."

"Sydney." Michael replied.

"It's a hole in the ground, full of water. Give it a couple generation and nobody will even have seen there was a city there anymore." Ritchie replied. "And my home? It's just plain not there anymore. They turned it into the biggest projectile in human history. What kind of monument to that is there going to be?"

"You." Michael replied. "And what you do."

Ritchie was silent for a long moment. "Mike. I wish my brother had been half as decent as you while he was still alive. Shit, you've even been a good influence on the Cap. But _fuck you_ for that. I ain't ready to take that on my shoulders."

A minute later, Jeannette was back, climbing the side of the tank. "I only saw eight Zakus, but we've got a problem. One of 'em had a set of personal colors and emblems. White and blue, solid six-pointed star with the bottom point elongated, like it's a blade."

"Daggerstar? That fucker-" Ritchie began.

"What?" Micheal said from the driver's compartment.

"Zaku ace," Jeannette explained to her driver with surprising calm. "None of this killed a few Salamis shit either, like some of them just pop a few warships and they're aces for doing the easiest gunnery work ever. He fought real opponents who could actually dodge and shoot back, Space Forces fighters during the colony drop. Over a hundred twenty kills in seven days. A fucking genius at it, wiped out a whole squadron on his lonesome in two different times. Rumor has it he used to be a tankie, before the giant robots."

"And that the motherfucker can't sleep without first strangling a kitten. Why the fuck not, he only helped kill millions of people." Ritchie added, incensed by the presence of someone who'd helped destroy his home. "Cap, I want this guy."

"There isn't a Feddie trooper alive who doesn't want him, Rich. Your personal claim is better, but you ain't here in a personal capacity." Jeannette replied. "You get him if you get him. Load HEAT." She switched to the radio. "Knight units, your targets are as follows. Knight One-One, your target will be at your one as you enter the area. Knight One-Two, your target is at your three as you enter the area. Knight One-Three, your target is at your twelve. Knight Two-One, Two-Two, your target is at your nine as you enter. Knight Two-Three, Knight Two-Four, your target will be at your ten, and it's the Daggerstar, so _don't miss_. Knight Three-One, your target will be at your twelve. Knight Three-Two, Three-Three, your target will be at your eleven. Knight Three-Four, your target will be at your two. Go on my mark."

She looked over at Ritchie in the turret, over the autoloader tracks. "It's not him. We don't have a good angle."

Ritchie bit his lip. "You let me put a round into his cockpit when he's down, we're even."

"Deal." Jeannette agreed. She switched to radio again. "Knight Company. Move in!" It was a hundred meters, roughly, from where they were to their first clear shot at their targets. "Rich, get the gun in position...range six hundred-"

"On the way! Reloading!" At the same moment they fired, at least a half-dozen other tank cannon thundered.

"Hit! Kill! Good shooting, Rich!" But the echo of the tank's gun didn't fade.

The roar of a Zaku's machine gun stitched together the first and second wave of crashes of tank cannon, and the sound of falling mobile suits. "Knight Three, this is Two, respond." A moment after that transmission another. "Shit, they're running through Three's position!"

"Mikey, bring us into three's position, fast as you can. Knight One, we're going straight to Knight Three, move!" Jeanette peered through her optics and swore, the night scope was shot to hell from a Zaku that was burning. _Zeke suits don't burn, not like that-_ She went infrared and swore again. "Target track, four o'clock! One hundred!"

At this distance, the big 150mm cannons were level and slightly off-centered on the command vehicle; it was so close the shell wouldn't strike the target centered if the spot between the two guns was the point used for aiming. The left barrel loosed a HEAT round. "On the way!" The command vehicle was hit. It stopped. It started to burn.

"Kill! Target track, three hundred!" A second HEAT round out. A regular high-explosive round followed them from Knight One-Two; they'd doubled-targeted that vehicle, and the HE round blew it to shreds. The Zeke command tracks were barely armored, small arms and grenade fragment protection only. Even a heavy shell not designed to pierce armor could go through theirs.

Jeannette flipped to normal light, just for a moment, and had the impression of something luminous, white in the black, at the same moment her shoulder blades hitched from that itch again. "RIGHT TRACK! Popping smoke!"

The smoke cans went off a little bit ahead of the thunder of a Zaku gun, and concrete fragments pinged audibly off the side of the tank. "Knight One, sound off!"

"One-Two, no harm!" "One-Three, intact!"

"Knight Two, find a way to flank the position six hundred meters ahead of us. Knight One, back up and stand by to offer supporting fire." The smoke cans offered three minutes of cover in no-wind conditions. She'd been outside long enough to know they didn't have that long. "Knight Three, any receiving, respond." Nothing. Jeannette bit her lip as the tank swung on its tracks and reversed.

The smoke started to clear enough that she caught sight of at least one tank wreck before they turned the corner. _Damn._

"Knight Actual, Two-One. We got six of the Zakus and four command tracks. Daggerstar isn't here. Repeat, Daggerstar isn't here."


	7. Interludes 1

**Interlude: How Icelina Met Garma **

It was night, but the sky had not yet darkened. Perhaps unsurprising considering how urbanized the area was, but rather than usual white and hollow of normal skyglow, it was tinged red and glowing off high clouds like it covered a volcano, and accompanied by the roll of distant man-made thunder. The sights and sounds of home dying, just over the horizon. The Burning of New York was well underway.

They'd heard the howl of jet engines and seen Federation fighter-bombers flash overhead twice, flying low, their wing hardpoints carrying weapons. The Federation was unable to stop it, but unwilling to sit by and do nothing. The presence of another glow on the horizon, on the Jersey side of town, showed where they were going as the Federation's military and the local guerrillas did the only thing they could that might help, and attacked the command group of the forces currently trying to level New York.

Then the sound of much closer man-made thunder, and the bright light from behind. Icelina turned in her seat, sharply, shielding her eyes, and in the afterimages saw the shape of a Zeon mobile suit. It was advancing at a slow walk, its gun flashing occasionally as it fired at a civilian vehicle. It was not enough to burn the empty city, it seemed; they must rend and tear anyone they could reach. Some drivers tried to swerve onto the shoulder and pass others; some went off-road entirely, desperate to get away. The orderly group moving away from the horror instantly became a disorganized mob, and just as instantly dissolved into a snarl behind the first few vehicle wrecks that resulted.

And the Zaku kept coming. Thud. Thud. Flash, roar. One round every other step. People were getting out of their cars and running, and that provoked a long roar as the Zaku fired a burst into the crowd before it could disperse. That roar masked another sound; another set of thuds, rising rapidly and quickly.

There is no sound in the world like a group of mobile suits at the charge. From a distance, they sound like they are far more in number than they actually are; four or six sound like dozens, and a dozen or more sound like hundreds. Closer, within a couple of kilometers, it is something both heard and felt: a vibration through the earth and felt in the teeth, and a noise like the crack of doom as eight or more feet supporting sixty-ton three-story tall metal monsters rise and fall in unison. Within half a kilometer, most people are no longer aware of it as a distinct sound, for they have trouble hearing anything at all. It is instead something they are aware of as if an earthquake while loose objects rattle or slide across the ground. Only the most determined can keep their feet without bracing upon something, and the assault on the senses makes it impossible to think coherently. The MS-06F Zaku has a land speed of approximately 88kph. It can cross a kilometer in slightly less than a minute.

* * *

"I warned you," Garma said softly to himself. "I warned you that if you crossed that line-" He shook his head, and flipped his comms to active. "Soldier, your name and unit?"

"Prince Garma, this is not your concern," came the answer. Cold and harsh; another of Gihren's wind-up psychotic soldiers, without soul, addressing a man who he regarded as fop. Garma wondered idly where they all came from, Gihren always seemed able to find another.

"Very well. Under Article One I charge you with usurpation of state authority and mass murder." He lined up the Zaku on his crosshairs. "How do you plead?"

"I answer to Gihren Zabi alone."

"Defense noted. You were warned if you crossed the rivers you were subject to my laws as well as those of my brother. In light of the heinous nature of your crimes, the only possible sentence is summary execution." It struck Garma how easy it was, to simply pull the trigger. It caused him no moral qualms that he was firing on another spacenoid, another soldier of Zeon. In that moment, he almost shook his head. _How corrupt we've become. How Romanesque, that we so easily turn the weapons of the state against each other. Gihren...what have you done to us?_

The other Zaku went down hard and did not stir. "Men, spread out and form a firing line. If those toy soldiers of Capital Division wish to vent their wrath on the helpless then they will come no further, is that understood?"

* * *

At first, irrationally, she thought it was the Red Comet. A pair of giant red legs, one to either side of her car. A closer looks showed a green torso to the mobile suit, and that it was not some magical gift from the Federation, but a standard Zeon model. There were several others, spreading out to either side, the fires throwing weird highlights off them. They had their weapons raised, or at least she assumed that was what the long things they carried were. Icelina hadn't really gotten a good look at the other one between being dazzled by the muzzle flash and explosions. Ahead of the wreck, lights were coming down the road as well; she couldn't see from what. Her seatbelt finally released, and she stumbled out of the car. One ear was producing nothing but ringing, but the other still worked, though sound seemed distant.

"Miss?" There was someone in a Zeon uniform there. They followed it up with a call of "Medic!" The mobile suit carefully knelt, which produced a lot of noise and made her flinch, but also shielded her and the Zeon troopers from anything else that might come from that direction. A few moments later some very helpful woman in Zeon uniform was wrapping her in a blanket and peering at her left ear in worry.

"Who was that?" Icelina managed to mumble.

"Captain Garma Zabi," the medic replied.

* * *

**Interlude: The Wages of Sin**

The ferries had stopped running ten minutes ago. Fires were flaring on Manhattan. Cima wasn't watching, slumped in her cockpit, exhausted. She had been awake for thirty-six hours straight, and it was catching up with her. "Falkenhayen, report."

"Ferry master reports he got everyone, Commander. The dock was empty. He has video." _Everyone. We got everyone out._ It couldn't be literally true. People were left behind, somewhere. _But not mine!_

A small penance, but a worthwhile one. Then her Zaku alerted her to the approach of an aircraft. She spun it on one heel and froze. That had been a Federation Don tactical bomber. "Feddie aircraft passing overhead. Hold fire unless fired upon." She watched the Don swoop towards a Zaku standing guard, then break away and climb suddenly, and the glow of rocket motors from the missiles it unleashed. Tracers chased it. Too late.

She watched the Zaku pilot die with an odd detachment. Capital Division's pilots had no experience with land combat, or Federation aircraft, experience that her own people had won at the cost of broken suits and dead pilots. Against a Mongoose or an attack helicopter, a Zaku could fight on nearly even terms. Against the Federation's Tin Cods and Dons, with heavy electro-optical guided missiles hardened to withstand Minovsky effect...a single Zaku could only try to hide. A large group, throwing everything into flak, could hold them at bay for short periods, but only Dopp support could provide true protection.

_I should care. He didn't volunteer for this assignment_. Cima paused, and shook her head. _Neither did I. And I certainly do not deserve absolution because I didn't volunteer to use nerve gas on a colony._ Perhaps it would be appropriate to say a prayer, but she had never learned the words. A skyscraper fell behind her, and she turned, with a sense of terrible slowness, to watch as another collapsed, and another. She'd seen an entire colony die. The scale of what she saw here still baffled her.

A black Zaku decorated with a pair of green lightning bolts on the chest moved up beside her own, and then started to take a step forward before she put out her Zaku's arm to stop it. "We can't, Adrian."

"Damn him." The other pilot's voice resonated with low anger. "It's not even a byproduct of battle, reaction and action for victory. He's doing it just because he can. There are buildings in that city older than the Universal calendar-"

"You can say that to me, Adrian, but you can't say it here." Cima struggled to be kind as she said it, but there were too many other ears now. She trusted her own Marines, but Adrian's own unit was mixed and she knew at least three of them were from Zum City.

"I don't care. Let them drag me out and execute me for treason if they want. This is madness. I am literally watching humanity _step backwards_, destroy its own progress, for no other reason than because someone felt like it." Adrian's family...she didn't actually know how he got on with the other Vists, though given they were mostly Earthborn, she suspected it was...strained. Still, some of the Vist family's usual refrain regarding the progress of humanity had clearly rubbed off on him.

Cima did not know the words for a prayer, though at the moment she thought she was having the religious equivalent of a bad trip on acid. Faith wasn't something she'd been blessed with before she'd been tricked into gassing a colony. But now she wondered it was possible, if there was even a word, for the opposite of faith.

She did know words appropriate to this moment nonetheless. She knew Kipling. "The wages of sin is death."


	8. Daggers

**Daggers**

"We've done a lot, and we can't count on the Zekes to keep the other Zekes back forever." Ted's argument was well-reasoned, but...here, looking across the river. Almost all the skyscrapers were down. The sky glowed dully from the fires, not the open-and-hollow of city skyglow, but something variable and red and _wrong_.

"What about you, Leatherneck?" The marines had been supposed to stay in Albany. They hadn't. When Ritchie had commented, Jeanette had told him if he ever did something similar in such a situation, she would forgive him too.

"The Zekes haven't tried to get off the island yet. If they do I'm pretty sure we could close the nearest bridge with our Adam unit, at least for awhile. Our missiles outrange their guns." A marine rifle company was just like a standard mechanized infantry company, with the exception of the fact they had an extra four Wolfhounds, armed with a missile launch system rather than a normal turret; Talon SAMs on the outer surface, four tubes, and four tubes that could be reloaded from inside the vehicle of ATGMs in the center. ADAM stood for Air-Defense Anti-Mobile; the model was young enough to be contemporary with the threat of Zaku attack. "We might even be able to drop it. It's a suspension bridge. We could blow the cables."

Jeannette took a moment to reign her desired reply of "are you out of your fucking mind" in; the marine's idea was tactically sound and he was thinking about how to win the battle. Any other time and place, she would have dropped a bridge to prevent the enemy flanking her without hesitation. Things changed because it was _here_ and _now_, but he couldn't be blamed for reverting to type. Or for being right. "This place has seen enough raw destruction I don't really want to drop the bridge too. Get your Adams moving, and tell them I want them dropping the bridge _only_ if Zakus are actually reaching our side. Ted, I hear you, but if you look to your right...we all want these guys. We're going to make one more try."

Now all that mattered was where they'd run to. The resistance had confirmed they hadn't sought shelter with First Marine Battalion and the other Zeke units by the waterfront. There were scattered reports that Zeke units were actually exchanging fire to the south as well, and a dozen Zakus had fled west from Newark while the attack was ongoing; those guys were running hard and probably beyond her reach by now. Going north...the road north was empty, to the eye, but the Zekes only knew there was some size of Federation unit in Albany and it reached some distance south. There could be _anything_ on the road north as far as they knew.

"Knight Actual, I have a navy Flatmouse on the line for you."

Air recon. That'd help. "Knight Actual, go."

"Knight Actual, this is Spook Nine. I hear you're looking for Daggerstar. He's to your west, one klick. Be advised, he shot down a pair of our Tin Cods. At least one of them had a good 'chute. If you can locate the pilot we would be much obliged."

"Copy, Spook Nine. We'll look. Knight Actual, over." The Flatmouse pilot signed off, and she waited a moment, then spoke again, switching to the all-hands. "All units, Knight Actual. We're moving out. Our target is roughly one klick west. We're going after a Zeon ace, and he's already gone through Knight Three, so _be careful_. Leatherneck Four, you're watching the bridge. I want immediate updates on any movement around it; call me direct." She switched again, to talk to the Command Hound. "Get the resistance looking for that pilot. Tell them to avoid contact with Daggerstar if they can."

"So we get another shot at him." Ritchie observed.

"Take it easy, tough guy. He blew through Three like they weren't even there." Michael warned.

"You were there for Texas, Rich. This isn't a recent recruit. He knows his gear. And I believe that he was a tankie, too. So he knows us, knows how we think." Jeanette chewed her lip a moment. "We're going to have to be tricky."

* * *

Finding the Daggerstar cost them a Wolfhound crew; but the 120mm APDS round had not penetrated the aft troop compartment because of its angle, and the marines had done their service proud even as they stumbled from their burning vehicle, returning a pair of LAW hits.

They'd accomplished nothing. Knight Two-Four had blasted him with a pair of HEAT rounds as well. All of it had done nothing. He had vanished again, his Zaku leaping into the air to clear a low building and escaping down another street. And Jeanette had realized it was far, far worse than anything she'd previously thought.

She hammered a fist into the turret top, standing in her hatch. _Composite armor. _The Zaku used RHTA; rolled homogeneous titanium alloy. In truth, not even that much of it based on what intelligence reports she'd seen; raw armor was something like only a third of a Zaku's weight. But the designers of the Zaku had been ridiculously, incredibly cunning in how that weight was actually used; putting just the right amount of armor at just the right angles to protect the most vulnerable parts of the suit from the directions it was most likely to be shot at. However, no form of rolled homogeneous metallic armor was good at coping with the jet of molten metal of a HEAT round.

Zeon used RHTA because of their easy access to vast amounts of titanium in lunar deposits, and it was thus cheap and convenient for them. But Federation composite armor, steel, depleted uranium, titanium, and ceramics interwoven and layered, was much stronger. And it resisted HEAT rounds far better than any other armor Jeannette knew of. Most Zakus fired a mix of armor-piercing discarding-sabot and high explosive from their machineguns because they knew HEAT was of little use against Federation warship armor, and an incidental hit might glance off a tank giving it a chance to fire back. Some Zekes did use HEAT-DP instead, not many, because they were more scared of missile-armed infantry than failing to land a whole burst on a tank.

Intellectually, it wasn't a surprise that with so many warships and installations lost by now that the Zekes would get their hands on Federation composites. Physical proof that her best weapon against Zakus had just gone away was still something Jeannette could have done without.

"Mikey." Jeanette said softly. She looked at the wreck of the Wolfhound and the damage to the building the Daggerstar had jumped, hit by several rockets intended for his suit. _Jumped to avoid the rockets. Not entirely confident in his armor... _"Move us up two streets." _You should never believe you're invincible, but there are times where your job is to soak fire. He was an escort for-  
_

They passed the burning wreck of a Zeke command track. One of the marines, having bailed out of the destroyed Wolfhound and run for a nearby building, had fired his LAW at the command track instead of the fleeing Zaku. Weird target selection, it was technically more valuable but it was also not a threat really, but she wasn't going to complain. Though, the fact the Daggerstar had fled and left the track to die... _Dumbshit. He was guarding these people__._ Yes, Jeannette wanted them dead, and yes, her opponent had screwed up and she shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. But if this guy was supposedly so damn good...

_Assume, for the moment, he is that good. And ran anyways. He ran because..._ She paused in mid-sway, having been moving with the motion of the tank. The marines had seen only one Zaku. But more than one escaped by their count. There had been at least one more command track too. _They split up...He wouldn't run then. Still got a purpose. They're shot to pieces, only two or three of them left, about a dozen of them already ran off...Shiiiiit. Discipline breakdown? Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost?_

It sounded absurd, that the enemy could break and not be noticed. But here, on an urban battlefield, with so much visual clutter... It was disturbingly plausible, that she couldn't even see well enough to tell she was actually winning. "Knight Command, Knight Actual. Get me that Flatmouse. We need eyes."

"Knight Actual, hold one. We have Zeke transmissions in the clear. You need to hear this."

"This is Black Nine to any receiving unit on the waterfront, I'm engaged and headed your way."

"Track that transmission, pass it to the navy if you can." Jeannette said, pressing her helmet and its integrated headphone closer on the right side.

"Black Nine, Marine Alpha Actual. Denied." The voice was female, angry, precise diction lending it an upper-class air. Familiar; the Zeke she'd met south of Albany. "Approach and you will be fired on."

"God damn you, Garahau! They're killing us out here!"

"Is fighting for your life like an honest soldier so hard, Black Nine? Get off my comms." Enough ice to have frozen the recipient solid in that reply.

"We couldn't get a good fix on it," the Command 'Hound reported. "Ground clutter messing with signal strength."

Jeannette frowned. "The Flatmouse."

"On it, Major."

* * *

The marines had clipped the other Zaku that had gotten away, after a fashion. The pilot had abandoned his mobile suit, and the marines had caught him and found his suit. Jeannette had already had them call for a Gunperry to recover the suit; a mechanically intact Zaku, even if the pilot had wiped or destroyed the computers, would make the brass very happy.

Now they were hunting around for a way to ambush the last one. Jeannette had a plan. It wasn't, in her opinion, a very good plan, but this wasn't an exercise and style points didn't count. It just had to work.

They were moving up a street, and she noted a glass-fronted building. They were in a good spot. Then she looked across the street...

"Oh god." Michael murmured. The sign said it was a religious school. They must not have gotten the word, somehow...the entire area had been evacuated, the Zekes had seen to that, so had the resistance. They must have deliberately stayed. Maybe a half-dozen families? Adults. Kids. There were _kids_ there. And parts of them.

Someone, it was impossible to say which side, had destroyed the building. Jeannette didn't think it had been the navy air, at least. The people inside had been trying to run out of the building, when someone had blown it and them up. Navy air would have been too quick for that. Something that made a lot of noise, but didn't appear, flatten, and disappear. It took a few seconds at least. A Zaku...or a tank. A few rounds of high explosive would have done the building as well as a Zaku burst.

"Cap," Ritchie said in a voice soft because of its strangled quality.

"Look away, Rich." He did so, slowly. "Visualize a staircase. And climb out of it." Her voice was surprisingly gentle. "There was a class, back in Basic. Coping one-oh-one. They taught how to dissociate. That's what works for me. Visualize a staircase. And climb out of it." She closed her eyes. "Traverse left forty degrees. Load one round High Ex. Fuze point detonating."

"Cap?" There was a note of horror in Micheal's voice. "Here?"

"We need an ambush point. They give it...authenticity." Jeannette opened her eyes. "They're dead, Mikey. I'm not going to run them over or something, but...nothing we can do would add to their pain. Their suffering is over. Rich?"

"Loaded. Fuze is set."

"Fire. Reload one round HE, set for point-detonating." Even with a point-detonating fuze, the round shattered the glass and then blew it out, most of the round behind the glass by the time of detonation. "Mikey. Back us into that building." She switched to the radio. "Point is at two seven by two four. Leatherneck, you're up. Start herding."

The Flatmouse was tracking the Daggerstar's Zaku and the unit's own positions, passing that data to the Command 'Hound, which coordinated the movement of the various Wolfhounds and tanks. By faking engagements around the Daggerstar with Wolfhounds firing into the street or empty buildings, they would channel his movement, pushing him past a tank waiting in ambush, which would shoot the Zaku's legs from the side, where their angling for frontal hits wouldn't help and their armor wasn't very thick, gimping it and hopefully bringing it down. Then they'd just pump Sabot into the Zaku until it was dead.

The whole thing was ultimately about as fair as handing a kid a handgun and telling them to fight the 61A3, and a demonstration of why the Zekes needed the Minovsky effect. The Federation's military, on its turf, with its datalinks and radios and numbers intact, could do things like easily. The Zekes had to take that away, using Minovsky particles to break the communication and coordination of their more numerous enemies. Then the battle could turn on the individual superiority of the Zeon machines.

Jeannette poked her head out of the tank once it was nestled deep in the building and frowned. The store had never been designed to have sixty tons of armored vehicle parked inside it. They'd fucked up the sidewalk something fierce, and she had about a foot of clearance over her hatch; less over the optics periscopes. The remains of a long jewelry display case, a dozen or more racks of clothing, and a trio of checkout line registers and their islands crushed by the tank bore mute witness to the inability of civilian life to stand up to military activity.

"Cap, that sidewalk..." Ritchie observed, seeing through his sights what she did.

"That's why I had you load another round of HE." She dogged her hatch shut. "Target the sidewalk. Reload Sabot when you've erased it."

"Might be hard to get out of here." Michael warned. "Concrete rubble is bad for the tracks. If we get stuck here..."

"Hold fire." Jeanette paused. The 61A3 had been her home, her sword, her shield, for the last few months. The thought of losing it hit surprisingly hard. "Rich. Worth losing the tank?"

"Hell yes, Cap. It's the Daggerstar." Ritchie's reply was quick. He didn't see the need to think.

"Mikey. Worth losing the tank?"

"If we get him for sure, yeah. But legging him ain't getting him. Autoloader takes what, Ritchie?"

"Three seconds."

"So we leg him. He goes over, _maybe_. He's supposed to be good at this, remember. Three seconds. Hit him in the cockpit or he probably kills us." Michael audibly shook his head, the sound of his helmet shifting on his head coming over the intercom. "This is all on you Rich. It's too fast for either of the other of us to matter. Can you do it?"

Looking over the gun, over the autoloader tracks, Jeannette saw Ritchie pause and chew his lip. It wasn't an entirely mechanical question. There were strong mechanical, physical, elements to it; it did encompass the question of whether he was physically capable. But it was also very much a mental question. _This man destroyed your home. Your shots must be perfect. You cannot tremble on the trigger in anger; you cannot get buck fever and fire early. This is a shot like any other, like training; you have to take it like that._ Ritchie took a deep breath, and blew it out, making a loud noise over the intercom.

"Hey, watch that shit." Jeannette said, wincing.

"Sorry Cap. Micheal: Yeah, I can do it."

"Then let's do this thing." Micheal said.

"Spook Nine, give me an ETA?" Jeannette said.

"He's not on your street yet-wait one..." The Flatmouse pilot and his backseater had to be under enormous stress, Jeannette reflected. They were doing a job normally given to the half-dozen guys on a Dish, and also still had to fly the plane to fairly tight tolerances to maintain their view. "Six blocks. On your street. Moving fast. Sixty seconds."

Jeannette acknowledged and switched back to the intercom, then paused and opened her hatch. She could hear it, the rapid footfalls of the Zaku. The ceiling shook, over her head and dust came down on her, but the tank did not; it was more stable than the building and nearly as heavy. She reached up and slowly started to turn the handle for the hatch to shut it.

Which made the appearance of a Zaku leg when it happened a surprise in how slowly it seemed to be moving. Out of the corner of her eye she noted a slight turret adjustment, but her focus was on the leg. Jeannette started to brace.

_BOOM. Chunck!_ The breeches ejected the spent brass. _Shiss_. Compressed air pushed the new shells into the breeches. _SLAM_. The breeches closed. The Zaku had stumbled. It was pitching backwards, which would actually work to their advantage considering how far it had gotten. The turret was traversing back again as Ritchie raced to lay the guns "Mikey-"

With a sound that was even louder than the report of the 150mm cannons, the Zaku hit the street and immediately started to roll onto its side, its gun coming up from the opposite side of the suit where it had been held. Jeannette reached for her hatch handle, twisting it to close the hatch, as the Zaku's pilot started to rake the store with gunfire. He probably didn't know what had happened to him exactly yet, but he knew where it had come from.

_BOOM BOOM._ Not synchronized this time, a slight firing delay as Ritchie hedged his bets. "-ADVANCE!" Jeannette finished. The tank lurched forward, but the Zaku had fallen silent. A quick look confirmed a cockpit penetration, dead center over the pilot's seat, and another less than sixty centimeters to one side of that. Jeannette, consumed in that assessment, caught only the tail end of another pair of rounds slamming home as the tank reached the edge of the crater it had blasted in the storefront and sidewalk. _BOOM_. The tank fired one last time. At a range of barely fifteen meters the sound as one of the Sabot rounds _whang_'d off the Zaku's chest armor was actually audible inside the tank, but the other penetrated, and the Zaku's monoeye dimmed instantly as its reactor scrammed automatically when damaged. A moment later there was a dull thump as the Zaku's scuttling charges destroyed its computer equipment.

The tank was churning its way up the other side of the crater, its stabilization having done the job marvelously for that last pair of shots. "HALT! Cease fire!" Jeannette caught movement in the corner of her eye and whipped her optics around. "Traverse right-" she heard another pair of Sabot rounds slam home and -"cancel that! It's the leathernecks." A pair of Wolfhounds in marine dark blue with white tops had come up the street fast. The Flatmouse pilot was yelling over the radio; he wasn't the only one. Jeannette ripped her helmet off and brought the mic close to the headphone on the opposite side, producing an ear-hurting screech as an impromptu method of clearing the channel. "Daggerstar," she said once the channel was clear, "is down. Center cockpit. Charger Command, Spook Nine, push a signal through to Albany for a second Gunperry with heavy lift gear. This guy was driving something new, if we can keep it that'd be good. Leatherneck Four, sitrep."

"Zekes are massing at the water's edge across the bridge. We have Zeke Marines massing on our side, too. The Zeke Marines have their guns pointed at the bridge." The lieutenant commanding the ADAM platoon sounded distinctly unhappy with his situation.

"Where's that first Gunperry, Charger Command?" Jeanette asked. She didn't actually trust the Zekes to fire at each other, even if they'd threatened to.

"Loading cargo now. Five minutes they say." The Command Hound's radio crew hadn't taken her refusing to ride with them as a slight, thankfully.

"Cancel the second Gunperry and inform the resistance we're getting out of here the moment the first Gunperry is away." Oh well. You couldn't score all the intelligence coups in the world on one mission. People might get...unreasonable expectations. Jeanette glanced down to Ritchie. "Grab a flashlight and your carbine." She reached forward, past her optics monitors, and grabbed her carbine from its own storage rack. "You wanted to make sure this guy was dead. We're making sure he's dead." She clicked the radio on. "Leatherneck Three-One, dismount your squad to check the Daggerstar and confirm he's dead." Then she was standing up in the turret, checking the carbine's safety before she levered herself out of the turret. Apparently Leatherneck Three-One had anticipated the command, as she noted that their squad automatic weapon team had already reached her tank, crouching in the lee of the vehicle, and some of the other squad members were moving her way.

"Major, that's not real smart," the marine squad sergeant said. He was cautious, but within his rights. This was an infantry job.

"My gunner was from Atlantia." Jeannette said simply, naming the colony used for the drop. To anyone who recognized the Zaku's colors, that statement explained everything.

The sergeant looked towards where Ritchie was clambering out of the tank, and stiffened slightly. "Understood, ma'am." The SAW team clambered onto the front hull of the tank, centering their field of fire on the Zaku's hatch, while Jeanette and Ritchie sheltered behind the vehicle. The rest of the squad advanced. After a minute or so, the Sergeant called back. "We're clear."

The hole over the entry hatch was smaller than 150mm; the penetrator of a Sabot round was only about 45mm itself. Enough to look through decently, maybe shove a grenade through if you were crazy enough to spend several seconds on it. Ritchie moved over to it, with Jeannette behind him, and raised his flashlight to get a look.

He didn't actually recoil, though Jeannette thought he wanted to from the way he twitched. Honestly, she had no firm idea what a direct hit from a Sabot round would do to the human body, but it wasn't something that made her curious either. There was no way the result of such an encounter belonged in any sane, non-psychotic universe.

_I suppose that says something about the one I live in_. Jeannette shook her head briefly. "Dead enough for you?" She tried not to sound like an asshole, saying it. Softer tone, as genuine as she would manage to make the question sound. It was a surprising struggle given her ruminations a moment ago, but she thought she had managed it just barely.

"Sure." Ritchie sounded a little disturbed. Not shaken really, no sign it had bothered him to the point he couldn't focus at all, but disturbed enough this was a scene he'd be revisiting at some point. Maybe not when awake.

"Mount up, then. We've got places to be."

* * *

The pullout was going less well then the infiltration. Of course, the infiltration had been just short of gift-wrapped for them by Garma Zabi.

Oh, the Earth Attack Force guys had tried. They'd actually dropped a bridge, one with Zakus on it, into the East River according to the resistance. They'd fired warning shots. But they hadn't, in the end, been willing to have a knock-down drag-out fight with people technically on their own side. It was about what everyone had expected.

Also very awkward when you had to run from angry Zakus that were faster than your tank, particularly when you would have to stop and refuel in Albany. "Charger, break contact, move to phase line epsilon." The tanks had the power, but her mechanized infantry had the speed; the hover vehicles could run much faster than a Zaku could hunt. As far as screening went, they were better at it.

But except for Leatherneck's ADAM unit and its excess of reloads, her Wolfhounds were running out of missiles by now, and they'd only just reached Coeymans. But they'd bought her tanks time to find good firing positions in treelines and buildings. It had cost them two vehicles and most of an infantry squad. The Command Hound's crew called in the navy air on the Zeke frontrunners to buy time, and she watched through her optics as the Zakus, dimly visible in the light of a cloud-delayed dawn, raised their weapons skyward and opened fire to try and fend off the aircraft.

_The EFAF is going to come out of this war smelling like roses._ She watched a couple Zakus fall, but...that was a Tin Cod, turning towards, losing altitude. It burst into flames as she opened the turret to watch, but the pilot stubbornly held it from going into completely uncontrolled mess until it was behind friendly lines; then they punched out seconds ahead of their damaged fighter exploding. "Leatherneck One, grab that pilot when they touch down. Charger Command, on my order, bring in everything you've got."

Four kilometers. Three. The Zekes were slowing up, getting cautious. Some of the Zakus were communicating by hand signals. Jeannette was incredulous. Their radios would be so much more secure without Minovsky interference, and on the ground at such relatively short ranges it would be easy for others to see and interpret what they were doing unlike in space. _But they're not Earth Attack Force. They've never had to fight without Minovsky cover. Reverting to type. _One of the Zaku pilots, with a pair of command antennas, was telling another with a single antenna to move their unit laterally.

"Leatherneck Four, you're going to have a company-level group pass in front of you, left to right. Knights, pick your targets from the front rank. Leatherneck, engage thirty seconds after Knight." She closed the radio. "Target Zaku, three o'clock. Go for the one with the bazooka." There were four Zakus over at their three, one being the one with two command antennas. Somebody, Jeannette knew, wouldn't be able to resist that.

Back to the radio. "Fire on my command." Judge it right. She had to scare them, make them flinch back. Air recon said Garma Zabi was concentrating his forces and headed this way, and he probably wasn't interested in helping them. One good flinch, one waver, and they'd have to choose between pursuit and escape.

_No pressure._ Each company of infantry was about a hundred lives, and her tanks added a few dozen more. She hadn't felt the weight quite so keenly before. "Fire. Command, do it!"


End file.
